The Heavenly Trio 9780816366415

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
01 One Question to Rule Them All
02 The Core Concern of the Pioneers
03 Ellen White’s Trinitarian Journey
04 A Gateway to Pantheism
05 Covenantal Trinitarianism
06 The Covenant Communicator
07 Mediator of the Eternal Covenant
08 A Necessary Equality
09 The Covenant Negated
10 The Covenant Community

Citation preview

THE HEAVENLY TRIO

TY GIBSON

EXPLORING THE VIEWS OF ELLEN WHITE AND THE ADVENTIST PIONEERS REGARDING THE TRINITY

THE HEAVENLY TRIO Exploring the Views of Ellen White and the Adventist Pioneers Regarding the Trinity Copyright © 2020 by Ty Gibson ISBN 9780816366415 Published by Pacific Press® Publishing Association Printed in the United States of America Designed by Brandon Schroeder Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. NIV indicates The Holy Bible: New International Version. Copyright © 1978 by The New York International Bible Society. Phi indicates Phillips New Testament in Modern English. Copyright © by Macmillan Publishing Company. KJV indicates King James Version. All italics, bolded type, and words in parenthesis within quotations are supplied. For additional books and other available formats, please visit tygibson.com. June 2020

For my girls, Amber and Leah Being your dad is a triune wonder: 1. awe-inspiring—to think that you exist, part mom, part me, and all you, these uniquely beautiful beings of wild freedom constrained by love, just blows my mind 2. gratifying—the fact that you are all grown up and still want to hang out with me simply because you love me and like me, is the paramount honor of life 3. hilarious—my goodness you two are funny, with such a whacky, witty, weird humor that I am endlessly entertained I love you with all my heart, and that is an extreme understatement

CONTENTS

01 ONE QUESTION TO RULE THEM ALL

02 THE CORE CONCERN OF THE PIONEERS

03 ELLEN WHITE’S TRINITARIAN JOURNEY

04 A GATEWAY TO PANTHEISM

05 COVENANTAL TRINITARIANISM

06 THE COVENANT COMMUNICATOR

07 MEDIATOR OF THE ETERNAL COVENANT

08 A NECESSARY EQUALITY

09 THE COVENANT NEGATED

10 THE COVENANT COMMUNITY

“Is power or love ultimate with God? Answer that one question aright, and we have the answer to all worthwhile questions.”

CHAPTER ONE

ONE QUESTION TO RULE THEM ALL

  George MacDonald, the nineteenth-century Scottish preacher, places before us one question, the answer to which, sets the foundation for answering every other worthwhile question: Is power or love the making might of the universe? He who answers this question aright has the key to all righteous questions. George MacDonald, England’s Antiphon (1868) What an ingeniously simple and yet profound perceptual lens for making sense out of . . . well . . . pretty much everything. Personally, I don’t think MacDonald’s bold claim is an exaggeration. It certainly does appear that there are only two possible ways to conceive of ultimate reality and the God behind it. Either power or love, as he put it, is “the making might,” or the creative force, that defines the universe and the character of the God that created it. I can’t think of a third option.

Building on MacDonald’s idea, I would suggest that the same holds true with regards to belief systems. Every doctrine we humans formulate is traceable to either a premise of power or love. If “God is love” (1 John 4:8), it logically follows that every true doctrine would expound upon God’s love and every false doctrine would in some manner diminish love in favor of power. Yes, God is powerful. The Bible says God is the “Almighty” (Genesis 17:1; Revelation 1:8). We rightfully employ the word “omnipotent” to describe God. And yet, even omnipotence has its limitations, extremely significant limitations, in fact. There are things that even Almighty God can’t do. The Bible itself names at least four of them: God “cannot lie” (Titus 1:2), as opposed to will not. God “cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13), which is to say, God cannot not be exactly who He is in character. God is unalterably true to His identity. God “cannot be tempted by evil” (James 1:13). And God cannot save a person that chooses to be lost, as much as He would like to (2 Peter 3:9). C.S. Lewis explains the idea like this: His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,” you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, “God can.” It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains

nonsense even when we talk it about God. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain We make a huge theological blunder when we turn omnipotence into omni-control. Exhaustive control within the context of free moral agency would necessarily entail coercion. If there is anything that Almighty God doesn’t want, it’s control. God possesses all power and yet does not employ all of His power to always get His way. The moment we equate omnipotence with omni-control, we need to reckon with the fact that love and coercion are mutually exclusive. They simply cannot simultaneously occupy the same relational space. To conceive of God as possessing absolute control is to eliminate any meaningful conceptions of love from our vision of reality. The point is both simple and profound: for God, love is ultimate, not power. God has power. God is love. And all the power God has is employed toward the exercise of the love God is. Within God’s essential makeup, God’s abilities serve God’s character, not the other way around. Love only occurs by the voluntary crossing of the neutral space that lies between an individual free self and an equally free other. If the essence of God’s identity is love, it follows that God does not employ force in His quest to establish a relationship with us. Implicit to the biblical idea that “God is love,” is the idea of divine self-limitation: God cannot control those whom He would have love Him. If love is the desired end, the sheer power of force cannot be the means of its attainment. This is why the biblical narrative portrays God as restraining His power in favor of wooing, drawing, alluring, calling, and pleading:

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth. Isaiah 45:22, NIV The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Jeremiah 31:3 Behold, I will allure her. Hosea 2:14 I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. John 12:32 How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Matthew 23:37 For the love of Christ compels us . . . that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. . . . Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 20 So, yes, God can do anything—any thing. “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). But it does not logically follow that with God all non-things are possible. God can do anything except what lies logically outside of the realm of possibility—like creating two adjacent mountains with no valley between, or creating existing things that don’t exist, or causing love to exist in the heart of a free agent who chooses not to love. Or—reaching all the way to the very foundation of reality itself —God cannot be love without someone to love, in as much as love entails other-centeredness. God cannot be love unless God, as God, is composed of both self and other. That is to say, if God is and always has been love, then God necessarily is a social dynamic of some configuration that includes both selfhood and otherness. And this brings us to the subject at hand.

Turn God into an absolute, solitary self, and any coherent notion of love will necessarily vanish from your theology, and all you will have left is some sort of impersonal power. I insert the word coherent in that sentence, because, yes, you could arbitrarily declare that “God is love” in the midst of your insistence that God is a solitary self, but contradictions would quickly ensue. Without knowing God as a relational dynamic of more than one person, the premise that “God is love” vanishes up the theological chimney in smoke. At that point, another foundational premise must necessarily be put in the place of love, and the only premise remaining is power. In the pages that follow, we will explore the implications that emerge from the theological premise, in its anti-trinitarian form, that God is a solitary self. We will also explore, by contrast, the implications of a social theology of God, which we will call Covenantal Trinitarianism, for reasons that will become beautifully evident as we proceed. This book is titled, The Heavenly Trio. It is a follow-up to my previous release, The Sonship of Christ, which explored the identity of Jesus as “the Son of God.” In that study we engaged in what we called “an Old Testament reading of the New Testament,” allowing the Hebrew narrative of Moses and the prophets to tell us what the apostles mean when they say that Jesus is “the Son of God.” While Sonship was written for a wide audience of Bible students from all denominational backgrounds, Trio offers perspectives of specific interest to Seventh-day Adventists. It explores the anti-trinitarian views of the founding pioneers of the Advent movement, as well as the view developed by Ellen White, who is regarded as a prophetic voice to the Advent movement. First, we will identify “The Core Concern of the Pioneers.” Prepare yourself for a major Aha! moment as we discover what these early Bible students of Adventism were really getting at with their pushback on the Trinity. It is generally acknowledged that the Advent pioneers were antitrinitarian, but little attention has been given to the specific concern they expressed. If we pay attention to the particular nature of their concern, it becomes evident that the Seventh-day Adventist Church arrived at its present trinitarian position, not in spite of the pioneers, but as the inevitable outworking of their concern. The pioneers were Bible students

in process. The development of theology takes time, so the pioneers were not without blind spots. But as honest searchers for truth, they were eager to learn. Notwithstanding their blind spots, I will suggest, they pointed the church in the right direction and thus contributed to the formation of the current doctrine of God held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. After this, we will examine “Ellen White’s Trinitarian Journey.” We will see that Ellen White, while surrounded by anti-trinitarian brothers whom she held in high regard, refrained from making any anti-trinitarian declarations herself. More significantly, she discerned the legitimacy of the specific concern her brothers were articulating, while steering clear of the deep problems that lay just beneath the surface of their antitrinitarian views. As a result, Ellen White formulated a rich trinitarian picture of God that was grounded in the individual personhood of each member of the Godhead, based on an awareness of the covenantal nature of God. In this chapter we will also discover how the anti-trinitarian doctrine lends itself to pantheism.1 This is a connection Ellen White discerned and addressed. I realize this is a provocative proposition, but once we put the pieces in place, I am confident you will find it persuasive. Next, we will pan out historically to consider in greater detail how antitrinitarian theology can be “A Gateway to Pantheism.” The world is full of belief systems. This chapter suggests that almost every belief system can be seen as fundamentally Hebrew or Greek in its orientation to reality. From the Hebrew lineage of thought, we receive a covenantal vision of God—relational, free, open, dynamic, empathic. From the Greek philosophers, we receive a monistic depiction of God—solitary, fixed, closed, absolute. Yes, the history of ideas is a little messier than these two categories encompass, but much of what’s going on in the human psyche is explainable within the dichotomy that exists between Hebrew and Greek frameworks. Having gained a working knowledge of Hebrew and Greek thought, we will offer a brief history of God under the title, “Covenantal Trinitarianism.” Our goal here will be to allow the Hebrew Scriptures to

form our picture of God, noticing how beautifully, delightfully, and convincingly different this picture is from the Greek view. Next, we will delve into the vital biblical truth of mediation, which opens our understanding to the activity of God within human history prior to the incarnation of Christ. Titling this chapter, “The Covenant Communicator,” we will examine two Old Testament revelations that depict God as always communicating in love to all human beings within the realm of our thoughts and feelings. Furthering our exploration of mediation, the next chapter is titled, “Mediator of the Eternal Covenant.” Here we will encounter within the biblical narrative the presence of Two Yahwehs, one in heaven and invisible to human sight, the other actively engaged on earth in a visible form. In the chapter, “A Necessary Equality,” we will see how knowing God as an indivisible social unit of other-centered love vitally informs our understanding of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary. If, in the final analysis, God is believed to be a solitary self, the death of Jesus on the cross can only be thought of as the ultimate act of self-centeredness on the part of a God for whom self-sacrifice is impossible. Once we’ve wrapped our minds around the covenantal equality of Christ with the Father, in the “The Covenant Negated” we will be able to discern by contrast that the anti-trinitarian doctrine constitutes a fundamentally hierarchical picture of God and of human relationships. To our astonishment, we will discover that hierarchical structures do not reflect the ideal relational maturity to which the new covenant calls us in Christ. Finally, we will reflect upon the church of Christ as “The Covenant Community.” It will become evident that our picture of God inevitably impacts our understanding of what the church is and how Christ calls it to function in the world.

All in all, in the following pages, we will discover that there really is only one question to rule them all. Is power or love ultimate with God? Answer that one question aright, and we have the answer to all worthwhile questions.

1 A doctrine in which God and the physical universe are synonymous, meaning that God is not a personal being that exists distinct from the universe.

“The current position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is true to the core concern of the early Advent pioneers and we are indebted to them for pointing us in the right direction.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE CORE CONCERN OF THE PIONEERS

  The Seventh-day Adventist Church was launched in the mid-1800’s by a group of people composed mostly of teenagers and young adults from a variety of denominational backgrounds. Most of them were participants in what was known as the Millerite Movement, led by the Baptist preacher William Miller. They believed that the second coming of Christ would occur in October of 1844. When Christ did not come, the Millerites experienced what came to be known as “The Great Disappointment,” which, if you think about it, is an extreme understatement. They were emotionally crushed. Emerging from the painful and humiliating ordeal, a core group of believers continued to passionately study the Bible together. Because they were from various denominational quarters, their theology was a mixed bag of different perspectives. But they all had at least one thing in common: they didn’t want to mindlessly follow any ecclesiastical creed. They were fired up about stripping all assumptions away and studying the Bible for themselves. All they wanted was to humbly search the pages of Scripture to discover its unadulterated teachings. They were a

group of theological nerds with a minimalist orientation on a quest to steer clear of imposed belief systems. “The Bible, and the Bible alone,” was their only creed. This process of personal and group study gradually produced a general consensus of shared beliefs on a handful of theological issues. The group discovered exciting and powerful biblical truths that had been lost sight of during the Dark Ages. Eventually, these believers became known as “Seventh-day Adventists,” due to their belief in the seventh day as God’s Sabbath and their cherished hope in the second coming of Christ.

A SPECIFIC CONCERN This diverse group of Bible students, as would be expected, had divergent views on various theological topics. The majority of these individuals, who would later be regarded as the “pioneers” of the Advent movement, were semi-Arian.1 That is, they believed Christ was in some manner brought into existence by the Father. Therefore, they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. But, as we will discover, they rejected a specific framing of the Trinity doctrine, and did so for a particular reason. Following the specific concern of the Advent pioneers to its logical conclusion, we will see that the Seventh-day Adventist Church eventually rejected Arianism and adopted a theologically rich version of trinitarianism that answered the concern of the pioneers. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of anti-trinitarian interest in some pockets of Adventism, although forthrightly rejected by the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a whole. Those who lead the antitrinitarian movement turn for support to the Advent pioneers. But they shouldn’t, for reasons that will soon become evident. While many of the Adventist pioneers were anti-trinitarian, most of them were not antitrinitarian in the same sense as is the current anti-trinitarian movement. The theological concern of the Adventist pioneers had to do with a particular truth they regarded as vital, and it was this: the personhood of Christ distinct from the personhood of the Father.

Once we actually take the time to read what the pioneers wrote on the Trinity, we discover that they were against a particular view of the Trinity called “modalism,” which is “the doctrine that the persons of the Trinity represent only three modes or aspects of the divine revelation, not distinct and coexisting persons in the divine nature” (Oxford Online Dictionary). Modalism is essentially a Christianized version of ancient Greek monism, which is “the doctrine that only one supreme being exists” (Google Dictionary). Modalism rules out any notion that God consists of three distinct personal beings who are one in nature and character. Ironically, in a plot twist that the current anti-trinitarians are apparently unaware of, we will discover that their view hails from pagan roots and is actually a version of the view the Advent pioneers were against. The Advent pioneers, even with their blind spots regarding the Sonship of Christ, exist in the theological lineage that produced the current doctrine of God held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Contrary to what has been claimed, they are not the theological forefathers of the current antitrinitarian movement hanging around the edges of Adventism. Thanks in significant part to the concerns of the Advent pioneers, the view settled upon by the Seventh-day Adventist Church is most emphatically not a modalism framing of the Trinity. It is, by contrast, what might be called “Covenantal Trinitarianism,” which paints the most beautifully relational picture of God imaginable. In this chapter, we will examine some of the strongest anti-trinitarian statements made by the Advent pioneers. As we do so, their specific theological concern will become evident. All of the statements we will consider here were written by pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with the exception of E.J. Waggoner, the son of a pioneer and an influential second-generation theologian in early Adventism. Please read their statements at a pace that will allow you to process exactly what they were saying, giving special attention to the sections I have emphasized in bold type. A consistent pattern of thought will be evident.

J.N. LOUGHBOROUGH

Let’s begin with J.N. Loughborough. One of the earliest non-trinitarian statements to appear in Adventism, the following was published in The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald in 1861. We begin with this statement because it is one of the clearest representations of the core concern of the Advent pioneers: It is not very consonant with common sense to talk of three being one, and one being three. Or as some express it, calling God “the Triune God,” or “the three-one-God.” If Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are each God, it would be three Gods; for three times one is not one, but three. There is a sense in which they are one, but not one person, as claimed by Trinitarians. It is contrary to Scripture. Almost any portion of the New Testament we may open which has occasion to speak of the Father and Son, represents them as two distinct persons. The seventeenth chapter of John is alone sufficient to refute the doctrine of the Trinity. Over forty times in that one chapter Christ speaks of his Father as a person distinct from himself. His Father was in heaven and he upon earth. The Father had sent him. Given to him those that believed. He was then to go to the Father. And in this very testimony he shows us in what consists the oneness of the Father and Son. It is the same as the oneness of the members of Christ’s church. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.” Of one heart and one mind. Of one purpose in all the plan devised for man’s salvation. Read the seventeenth chapter of John, and see if it does not completely upset the doctrine of the Trinity. To believe that doctrine, when reading the scripture, we must believe that God sent himself into the world, died to reconcile the world to himself, raised himself from the dead, ascended to himself in heaven, pleads before himself in heaven to reconcile the world to himself, and is the only mediator between man and himself. It will not do to substitute the human nature of Christ (according to Trinitarians) as the Mediator; for Clarke says, “Human blood can no more appease God than swine’s blood.” Com. on 2 Samuel 21:10. We must believe also that in the

garden God prayed to himself, if it were possible, to let the cup pass from himself, and a thousand other such absurdities. J.N. Loughborough, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, November 5, 1861 Please hear what Loughborough is arguing against and what is he advocating for. He is against making God out to be “one person.” Let that register clearly, because it will become increasingly important as we proceed. Loughborough is against a doctrine of God that would erase the fact that Jesus and the Father are “two distinct persons.” He wants us to understand that there is an actual relationship within God’s intrinsic reality, not merely the projection of a relationship that isn’t really there. The Father and the Son are not two manifestations of one person, but rather two persons who are of “one heart and one mind.” Loughborough’s view was, therefore, a theological precursor to what eventually became the official position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He was trying to affirm the distinct divine personhood of both the Father and the Son, defining their “oneness” as a oneness of heart, mind, and purpose. Loughborough was in process, however. He was a young Bible student formulating thoughts in a young movement. He knew two things clearly, but was fuzzy on the theological solution. The two things he knew clearly were that (1) the Father and the Son could not possibly be one and the same person, because (2) that would eradicate the idea of a real relationship between the two. The thing he was unclear on was that, while there is a trinitarianism that erases the distinct personhood of the Father and the Son (modalism), there is a trinitarianism that insists upon the distinct personhood of the two (a covenantal or relational trinitarianism, which we will explore as we continue our study). At this early stage of the Advent movement, Loughborough could not see a version of the Trinity that would answer to his concern. But that is exactly where Adventism ended up going in due course of study. And this theological development was due, in significant part, to the legitimate concern expressed by Loughborough and certain other pioneers. They set a course for Adventism that allowed the movement to

sidestep modalism in favor of an authentically relational doctrine of God, what Ellen White would eventually articulate as “the Heavenly Trio.”

JOSEPH BATES Next, let’s consider Joseph Bates. In his autobiography, this Advent pioneer recalls precisely why he found it impossible to embrace God as a Trinity: Respecting the trinity, I concluded that it was an impossibility for me to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, was also the Almighty God, the Father, one and the same being. I said to my father, “If you can convince me that we are one in this sense, that you are my father, and I your son; and also that I am your father, and you my son, then I can believe in the trinity.” Joseph Bates, The Autobiography of Elder Joseph Bates, p. 204 (1868) Again, the core concern is on full display. Bates is rejecting a specific idea. He finds it impossible to believe that God consists of one person projecting the illusion of three persons. That is, Bates was rejecting modalism. Do you see what this means for the current trinitarian debate? In rejecting the Trinity doctrine, Bates was not rejecting what came to be the position of the Adventist Church. In fact, Bates was pointing toward the church’s current position even as he could not yet fully see it. He was rejecting the idea that Father, Son, and Spirit are all one and the same person, knowing that such a picture of God would reduce God to a nonrelational being and render the New Testament portrayal of the relationship between the Father and the Son an absurd charade. As with Loughborough, the thinking of Bates was, therefore, tending toward the position that was eventually formulated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This position holds that God consists of three individual persons who are one in a manner that does not eliminate their distinct identities. In other words, the concern of Bates has been answered and satisfied by the doctrine of the Trinity that was eventually developed and is currently

held by the church. Said another way, the Seventh-day Adventist Church does not hold a modalism view of the Trinity and, therefore, does not hold the view Bates and the other pioneers were pushing back on. Bates, like Loughborough, was in process as a Bible student. His core concern was the same as that expressed by Loughborough and, therefore, was a theological bridge to the current view of the church. We are indebted to Bates for driving us away from modalism toward a doctrine of God that is distinctly interpersonal. How else would it be possible to say that “God is love” with any coherent meaning.

R.F. COTTRELL A year later, Roswell Fenner Cottrell expressed, in a less articulate form, the same concern expressed by Loughborough and Bates. You will see that he also displays an effort to understand the Sonship of Christ, but is not biblically literate enough to work out its meaning. He seems to be aware of his deficiency in that he settles for accepting the fact that Christ is God and, yet, the Son of God, simply because the Bible says so: “If the Scriptures say” a thing, “I believe it,” he reasons. Cottrell recognizes the challenge entailed in affirming the two apparently contradictory declarations of Scripture, but all he can do is agree with the two propositions without understanding how both can be true. Track with his thinking here: But if I am asked what I think of Jesus Christ, my reply is, I believe all that the Scriptures say of him. If the testimony represents him as being in glory with the Father before the world was, I believe it. If it is said that he was in the beginning with God, that he was God, that all things were made by him and for him, and that without him was not anything made that was made, I believe it. If the Scriptures say he is the Son of God, I believe it. If it is declared that the Father sent his Son into the world, I believe he had a Son to send. R.F. Cottrell, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, June 1, 1869 That one person is three persons, and that three persons are only one person, is the doctrine which we claim is contrary to reason and common sense. The being and attributes of God are above, beyond, out

of reach of my sense and reason, yet I believe them: But the doctrine I object to is contrary, yes, that is the word, to the very sense and reason that God has himself implanted in us. Such a doctrine he does not ask us to believe. A miracle is beyond our comprehension, but we all believe in miracles who believe our own senses. What we see and hear convinces us that there is a power that effected the most wonderful miracle of creation. But our Creator has made it an absurdity to us that one person should be three persons, and three persons but one person; and in his revealed word he has never asked us to believe it. . . . But to hold the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much an evidence of evil intention as of intoxication from that wine of which all the nations have drunk. The fact that this was one of the leading doctrines, if not the very chief, upon which the bishop of Rome was exalted to popedom, does not say much in its favor. . . . Revelation goes beyond us; but in no instance does it go contrary to right reason and common sense. God has not claimed, as the popes have, that he could “make justice of injustice,” nor has he, after teaching us to count, told us that there is no difference between the singular and plural numbers. Let us believe all he has revealed, and add nothing to it. R.F. Cottrell, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, July 6, 1869 Cottrell seeks to protect the individual personhood of Christ, like Loughborough and Bates, which is a good thing. But he gets trapped in a theological cul-de-sac by committing to a simplistic approach that fails to consider what the Bible itself means by designating Jesus as the Son of God. He sees isolated verses without considering their larger narrative context. He believes “all that Scripture says” about Christ, but he clearly does not yet know all that Scripture says about Christ. On the one hand, Cottrell affirms the divinity of Christ, since the Bible explicitly states that Christ is God. But then he leaps forward with, “If the Scriptures say he is the Son of God, I believe it. If it is declared that the Father sent his Son into the world, I believe he had a Son to send.” There is a glaring blind spot on display here, evident to those who have taken pains to understand what Scripture says about the Sonship of

Christ. We cannot fault Cottrell for not knowing what he didn’t know, but what he didn’t know created significant problems for him. Rather than panning out to ask Scripture what it means by calling Christ both “God” and the “Son of God,” Cottrell simply assumes that if Jesus is called “Son,” that must mean He was, in some sense, at some point, brought into existence by the Father as a divine son. This conclusion assumes that divinity is a quality of being that can be brought into existence, or conferred upon a created being, which is the premise of pantheism, as we will soon discover. Of course, Cottrell does not discern this implication. But by operating on this assumption, he misses the whole point of the Sonship of Christ as Scripture itself frames it. He sees individual trees (verses), but he does not see the forest (the story that informs the verses).

THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST Let’s briefly review the sonship narrative of Scripture for our own sake, in order to highlight the big story that Cottrell and the other pioneers overlooked. When the writers of the New Testament call Jesus “the Son of God,” they are consciously working out His Sonship identity from the Old Testament script, which runs like this: God created the first man, Adam, in His own image, and that man was “the son of God” (Genesis 1:26; Luke 3:38). Having fallen into sin, the son of God, Adam, transferred his rightful “dominion” over the earth to Satan (Genesis 1:28; Luke 4:5-6). God then promised to redeem Adam’s fall by the birth of a child through the womb of a woman, a second Adam, a new son of God, and thus to save humanity from within our own genetic realm (Genesis 3:15). The promise of a new son of God was then proclaimed to Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 12:1-3). The outworking of this promise is literally the

entire point of the Old Testament story, and its fulfillment in Christ is literally the whole point of the New Testament (2 Corinthians 1:20). The covenant couple—Abraham and Sarah—give birth to Isaac, who is identified in Scripture as the “son” of “promise” (Genesis 21:1-7; Galatians 4:23). The story clearly centers on a succession of sons. At this point, the concept of primogeniture emerges in the narrative—that is, the birthright of the “firstborn” son drives the story forward (Genesis 27:19, 32; 43:33; 48:14-18). The firstborn son is the channel through which the covenant promise is to be passed on from generation to generation. Isaac and Rebekah have a son, in the succession of covenant sons, whom they name Jacob. Jacob’s twelve sons become a nation and are corporately called by God, “My son, My firstborn” (Exodus 4:22-23). God also tells them, I “begot you” to a covenant purpose distinct from all the other nations (Deuteronomy 32:18). And it is right here that we have the origin of the language and concept of God’s only begotten son. Understood in context, this phrase means God’s unique covenant son, not in some sort of mystical sense, as if God literally birthed Israel into existence, but rather that God brought forth Israel as a nation for His covenant purpose. Likewise, this language does not indicate that God literally birthed Christ into existence as a secondary deity sometime in eternity past, but rather that Christ was born to the world within the covenant lineage of the human procreation process. Next in the narrative—through the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Israel—David is covenantally “begotten” as God’s “son” and thus is a type of the coming Messiah (Psalm 2:1-7; 89:19-29). Following David in the covenant lineage, Solomon is also designated by God as “My son” (1 Chronicles 22:10). When we read the whole story, the point and meaning of Scripture’s sonship language could not be clearer. Finally, just as promised, the long-awaited Messianic Son of God is born of a woman into the world. As the New Testament opens, we are told explicitly that He is the long-awaited “Son of David,” “Son of

Abraham,” and, as such, “the Son of God” (Matthew 1:1; 2:15; 3:17; 4:3). We are also told, just as explicitly, that He is none other than God Himself in the flesh (Matthew 1:23; John 1:1-5; 1 Timothy 3:16). Jesus is the Son of God in the covenant sense, as the fulfillment of the entire Adamic, Abrahamic, Davidic narrative. The story never probes His ontological,2 metaphysical3 origins, beyond informing us that He is none other than God, eternal God, in the flesh. While Cottrell feels compelled to affirm that Jesus is the Son of God, he is apparently unaware of the overall scheme of biblical thought on the matter, so he cannot make sense of the truth he rightfully affirms. He is loyal to what the Bible says in a few stand-alone verses, but he overlooks what the Bible says as a whole regarding the Sonship of Christ. As a result, he unwittingly ends up with a lesser God begotten by a greater God. The Bible does not, in fact, teach that Christ began to exist as the divine Son of God at some point in eternity past, but rather that God Himself began to exist as the covenant Son of God, or the second Adam, at the point of His incarnation.

JAMES WHITE In 1868, James White wrote along the exact same lines as Loughborough, Bates and Cottrell: Jesus prayed that his disciples might be one as he was one with his Father. This prayer did not contemplate one disciple with twelve heads, but twelve disciples, made one in object and effort in the cause of their master. Neither are the Father and the Son parts of the “three-one God.” They are two distinct beings, yet one in the design and accomplishment of redemption. James White, Life Incidents, p. 343, 1868 Again, the underlying concern is evident: the Father and the Son each possess distinct personhood. Clearly, modalism was the version of the Trinity doctrine James White and the other pioneers were resisting. They believed that the relationship between God the Father and God the Son was real, and they were endeavoring to protect that truth for significant theological reasons. If the Father and the Son were merely projected modes of expression emitting from a single being, then the entire

relational dynamic between them that we read about in the Gospels is a meaningless fiction. But even as James White and other pioneers were pushing back on the modalism view of the Trinity, James White himself sought common ground with trinitarians: The S. D. Adventists hold the divinity of Christ so nearly with the Trinitarians that we apprehend no trial here. James White, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, October 12, 1876 Clearly, while the pioneers found it absurd to view the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as one being projecting three persons, they believed in the divinity of Christ. James White was trying to make this clear. A little less than a year later, he moved deeper into the subject. While Loughborough, Bates, and Cottrell were positioning themselves against modalism, James White felt the need to affirm the divinity of Christ and, in the process of doing so, he coined some helpful terminology that would later inform the thinking of his wife, Ellen. Watch what he says here: We may look upon the Father and the Son before the worlds were made as a creating and law administering firm of equal power. Christ did not then rob God in regarding himself equal with the Father. Sin enters the world and the fall occurs. Christ steps out of this firm for a certain time, and takes upon himself the weakness of the seed of Abraham, that he may reach those who are enfeebled by transgression. With his divine arm our adorable Redeemer has hold of the throne of Heaven, and with his human arm he reaches to the depths of human wretchedness, and thus he becomes the connecting link between heaven and earth, a mediator between God and man. James White, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, November 29, 1877 This is a phenomenal development of thought, especially given the historical context in which James arrived at it. Here we see a preliminary effort to enlarge the frame regarding the Adventist doctrine of God. Until this point, James and his fellow Advent pioneers had only been insisting

on the distinct personhood of Christ alongside the Father. Now, James is reasoning further forward to work out the implications of what that distinct personhood means if Jesus is, Himself, divine. James White offers three insights, which, although still in their first phase of development, are quite brilliant: 1. He suggests that the persons we now know as the Father and the Son should be seen as both existing before Creation, and that in their precreation coexistence they should be seen as “a creating and law administering firm of equal power.” Hold onto this language, because it will show up again in the later writings of Ellen White. For now, it is helpful to simply notice that James White was already, at this early stage of the movement, discerning the two beings as “a firm of equal power” existing together prior to Creation and the Fall—not as Father and Son, which are post-creation roles, but as a “firm of equal power.” 2. Then James paints a chronological picture for us. He suggests that one of the beings that existed within the “firm of equal power” underwent a transition of position: “Sin enters the world and the fall occurs,” he explains, and then “Christ steps out of this firm.” This is an early and groundbreaking perception within the Advent movement. James perceived that Jesus Christ—the divine person we know in redemption history as the Son of God—was nothing short of “equal” with the divine person we know within redemption history as God the Father. They coexisted as a “firm of equal power,” until one of them stepped out of that firm to embark upon activities necessitated by the Fall. 3. Brother White then explains why Christ stepped out from the “firm of equal power.” He did this to become “a mediator between God and man.” And with that, this Adventist pioneer gave us, and his wife, Ellen, the key insight that would make sense of the whole theological conundrum of the Sonship of Christ. Why did one of the members of the “firm of equal power” choose to “step out” and occupy a different

position? He did so in order to mediate the knowledge of God to humanity. Thank you, James White! With this background, as we will soon discover, Ellen White would proceed to further develop the two crucial ideas set forth by James White and the other pioneers: • the distinct personhood of each of the three members of the Godhead, which renders the relationship between the three to be actual and the love that defines God’s identity real • the identification of the three members of the Godhead as equal and co-eternal “powers” prior to assuming the roles of Father, Son, and Spirit, within the framework of the creation-redemption enterprise

GENERAL CHURCH STATEMENT, 1883 Due to the fact that some of the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church had rejected the doctrine of the Trinity without offering sufficient explanation to clarify their target as modalism, a problem was developing. They had opened the church up to the charge of Arianism— a heresy that denies the essential and eternal divinity of Christ, originating with the Alexandrian priest, Arius (c.250-c.336). But it was not the intent of the pioneers to deny the divinity of Christ. In fact, they sought to affirm the divinity of Christ more unequivocally than what they believed trinitarianism was achieving with its modalism view of God. So they set out to achieve their goal by affirming the divine personhood of Christ distinct from the Father. No problem so far. But they overshot the mark by also suggesting that Christ must have emerged in some manner from the Father in eternity past, equating, at least, to semi-Arianism. They knew this created a problem for them that

they did not intend to create, but they did not know how to resolve the problem. This was likely due to the prooftext method of Bible study they were so good at, which has its place when employed with an eye fixed on the bigger story in which all the individual verse of Scripture reside. Nevertheless, by 1883 they found it necessary to clearly affirm the divinity of Christ, even while retaining the unbiblical idea that Christ must have been brought into existence by the Father: You are mistaken in supposing that S. D. Adventists teach that Christ was ever created. They believe, on the contrary, that he was “begotten” of the Father, and that he can properly be called God and worshiped as such. They believe, also, that the world, and everything which is, was created by Christ in conjunction with the Father. They believe, however, that somewhere in the eternal ages of the past there was a point at which Christ came into existence. They think that it is necessary that God should have antedated Christ in his being, in order that Christ could have been begotten of him, and sustain to him the relation of son. They hold to the distinct personality of the Father and Son, rejecting as absurd that feature of Trinitarianism which insists that God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three persons, and yet but one person. S. D. Adventists hold that God and Christ are one in the sense that Christ prayed that his disciples might be one; i.e. one in spirit, purpose, and labor. The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, April 17, 1883 This statement was a helpful clarification for its time, but it was also deficient in its grasp of the issue and came far short of understanding where the theological solution lay. While it clarified the core concern of the Adventist pioneers, it also revealed the blind spot that existed at this stage of the church’s theological development. On the one hand, the statement insisted that Adventists believed Christ to be God, which was a vitally needed clarification. The statement also made clear that it was precisely because of this belief that Adventists could not accept a “Trinitarianism which insists that God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three persons, and yet but one person.” That is, they rightly rejected modalism. So far, so good. But then the statement mistakenly assumes that in order to be true to Scripture—a noble

aspiration—they must hold that Christ, while fully God, must have been brought into existence by the Father. This, they felt compelled to believe, due to the fact that He is said to have been “begotten.” What was going on here? Well, the Advent pioneers were Bible students in process, part of a young movement that was finding its theological way forward in a world full of bad theology. At this point in their study, they saw the New Testament occurrence of the word “begotten,” but they saw it in isolation from the larger Old Testament narrative. As a result, they felt obligated to interpret “begotten” as a description of Christ’s ontological and chronological origins. The mistake is understandable, given the fact that they did not take into account what the word “begotten” means in the bigger story of the Bible. Due to their blind spot regarding the overall sonship narrative of Scripture, they did not know what to do with the fact that the New Testament designates Christ as the “Son of God.” So they felt, in their loyalty to Scripture, that they must believe that Christ was both fully divine and, yet, somehow had been brought into existence at some “point.” The early Advent pioneers were headed in the right direction, but they still had a ways to go in working out the implications of the divinity of Christ. The only way to move forward would be to pan out far enough to see the larger biblical picture, which, within its own internal narrative logic, clearly defines what the story itself means by designating Christ as God’s “only begotten Son.” Failing to do so inevitably generates odd metaphysical, extra-biblical, even spiritualistic ideas. This becomes evident as we now consider the strained efforts of Ellet Joseph Waggoner and Uriah Smith.

ELLET JOSEPH WAGGONER Ellet Joseph Waggoner was a second-generation Adventist physician, preacher, and writer. He is best known for his efforts to introduce the good news of righteousness by faith into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Inheriting Arian leanings from his theological forebears, he also dabbled in trying to defend the idea that Christ, sometime in eternity

past, began to exist by some kind of birthing action on the Father’s part. Here’s what he had to say on the matter: In arguing the perfect equality of the Father and the Son, and the fact that Christ is in very nature God, we do not design to be understood as teaching that the Father was not before the Son. It should not be necessary to guard this point, lest some should think that the Son existed as soon as the Father; yet some go to that extreme, which adds nothing to the dignity of Christ, but rather detracts from the honor due him, since many throw the whole thing away rather than accept a theory so obviously out of harmony with the language of Scripture, that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. He was begotten, not created. He is of the substance of the Father, so that in his very nature he is God; and since this is so “it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.” Col. 1:19. . . . While both are of the same nature, the Father is first in point of time. He is also greater in that he had no beginning, while Christ’s personality had a beginning. E.J. Waggoner, The Signs of the Times, April 8, 1889 All things proceed ultimately from God, the Father; even Christ Himself proceeded and came forth from the Father, but it has pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell, and that He should be the direct, immediate Agent in every act of creation. Our object in this investigation is to set forth Christ’s rightful position of equality with the Father, in order that His power to redeem may be the better appreciated. E.J. Waggoner, Christ and His Righteousness, p. 19 (1890) The Scriptures declare that Christ is “the only begotten son of God.” He is begotten, not created. As to when He was begotten, it is not for us to inquire, nor could our minds grasp it if we were told. The prophet Micah tells us all that we can know about it in these words, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity.” Micah 5:2, margin. There was a time when Christ proceeded forth and

came from God, from the bosom of the Father (John 8:42; 1:18), but that time was so far back in the days of eternity that to finite comprehension it is practically without beginning. ibid., pp. 21-22 (1890) He possesses immortality in His own right and can confer immortality upon others. Life inheres in Him, so that it cannot be taken from Him, but having voluntarily laid it down, He can take it again. ibid., p. 22 (1890) Let no one, therefore, who honors Christ at all, give Him less honor than He gives the Father, for this would be to dishonor the Father by just so much, but let all, with the angels in heaven, worship the Son, having no fear that they are worshiping and serving the creature instead of the Creator. ibid., p. 24 (1890) Waggoner is attempting an unnecessary balancing act, holding onto what he thinks is a biblical idea of God the Father giving birth to God the Son, while simultaneously advancing in his thinking to affirm the complete divinity of Christ. He is inching forward, but he’s stuck on the word “begotten.” Therefore, he misunderstands the Sonship of Christ. It is painful to watch him struggle. Right outside of his peripheral vision is the answer to the problem he is attempting to solve. All he has to do is look backward from the New Testament into the Old, but he never does. Nor did any of the Advent pioneers before him. They all got stuck on the word “begotten,” and so felt obligated to invest the word with a metaphysical meaning that Scripture never probes. Failing to grasp the larger biblical narrative of the covenantal sonship lineage, Waggoner trips all over himself with embarrassing contradictions. We are not to understand, he insists, that “the Son existed as soon as the Father,” because, of course, “the Father was . . . before the Son,” in as much as there is an obvious chronology of existence in a Father-Son relationship. But then, sensing that it makes no real sense for there to be a created God, Waggoner has to insist that “begotten” must mean something mysteriously different than the word “created,” although he can’t make

sense of the notion. And why can’t he make sense of it? Well, because to not exist and then to be made to exist, whether you call the causal event “begetting” or “creating,” are one and the same thing conceptually. On some level, he knows this. So he has to pull an idea out of thin air—and it is very thin air, indeed. He says that the “time” at which God gave birth to Christ “was so far back in the days of eternity that to finite comprehension it is practically without beginning.” In laymen’s terms, that’s what is called, philosophical gobbledygook. It is basically an exercise in saying nothing meaningful while attempting to sound like you are offering an intelligent explanation. But it is not harmless philosophical gobbledygook. To hold the idea that a God can be made to exist after having not existed, is, as we will soon see, the precursor to the deification of human beings, known as pantheism. Waggoner is suggesting that deity is a quality of being that can be brought into existence, and that this is what God did with Christ. God gave birth to a previously non-existent God, according to Waggoner. Not surprisingly, then, pantheism, or at least panentheism, is exactly where Dr. Waggoner ended up. There is no biblical warrant for Waggoner’s claim that the one we know as Christ had an ancient point of beginning. Even the few passages of Scripture he uses to support the idea do not say what he tries to make them say. He is clearly coming to the Bible with an idea and then throwing a few verses at the idea for support. His key text, of course, is John 3:16, in which Jesus is called God’s “only begotten Son.” But as we have seen, the word “begotten” has a clear meaning within the scope of the Old Testament narrative, which reaches its fulfillment in Christ. He is the only begotten Son of God in the covenant sense, not in the ontological sense. He is the Son of God in the lineage of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, David, and Solomon. Along with all the other early Adventist scholars, Waggoner overlooks this biblical material. None of them ever mention, let alone reckon with, the sonship narrative of the Old Testament. It simply never figures into their interpretations. It is as if they are trying to open a locked door without the provided key, which is in their hand while they are kicking the door with their feet.

Next, Waggoner employs Colossians 1:19. But he uses the text to convey something it does not say. Christ “is of the substance of the Father,” Waggoner explains, “so that in his very nature he is God; and since this is so ‘it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.’ Col. 1:19.” Waggoner thinks this text is saying that the Father was pleased to fill Christ with the fullness of divinity sometime way back in eternity past, the idea being that the divinity of Christ was either conferred upon Him or actualized in Him by the Father, but not innate to Him. The text, however, is talking about the post-incarnate Christ being filled with all the fullness of God as a human being, in the same sense that all mankind was originally meant to be filled with the fullness of God’s indwelling presence. How do we know this is what Paul means? Well, because he explicitly tells us so in Colossians 2: For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. Verses 910 Young’s Literal Translation offers an even clearer rendering: In him doth tabernacle all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are in him made full, who is the head of all principality and authority. The point Paul is making is that Christ, as the new prototypical human, was full of God’s indwelling presence, so that we, too, may be “made full” of God through Christ. Paul is not telling us that Christ was made divine by an act of the Father. If that were Paul’s point, we would be obligated to believe that we, too, are made divine by the Father. Clearly, this is not what the passage is saying. Lastly, Waggoner employs Micah 5:2 in an effort to prove that Christ was at some point brought into existence by God the Father. But Micah 5:2 is a prophecy regarding the incarnation of Christ, not His ontological origins. Micah is not telling us about the “goings forth” of Christ from

non-existence to existence, but from the realm of eternity past into our world via His incarnation. Waggoner builds an entire doctrine of a lesser God being brought into existence by a “greater” God, while none of the Scriptures he marshals to support the idea say anything of the sort. It is a teaching void of biblical backing. This highlights the danger entailed in proof-texting our way to the formulation of doctrinal teachings. Waggoner sees the word “begotten” and simply assumes that the word refers to the ancient origins of Jesus. Therefore, he feels obligated to believe that Christ, in some manner, must have been brought into existence by God and, therefore, is not God in the “greater” sense that the Father is God. He sees the phrase “in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” and leaps to the conclusion that this means the Father somehow made Jesus divine, conferred godhood upon Him, or put deity into Him by some kind of mysterious act. He sees the term “goings forth” in reference to Christ and extrapolates the massive notion of God bringing forth (causing to exist) a lesser God. All the while, none of those verses of Scripture mean any of that. To discover what they do mean, one needs to read the immediate context of each text, as well as the larger narrative context of the whole Bible. But we shouldn’t be too hard on Waggoner. He simply brought to his reading of Scripture an idea he had been taught by the Advent pioneers. So he saw what he was told he would see. He had a blind spot. Waggoner, like the Advent pioneers, was high centered, wheels spinning, on the word “begotten.” But now we know the biblical meaning of the New Testament term, “only begotten Son.” There is simply no reason to continue applying ontological and chronological interpretations to the term. That was an interpretive leap made by the Advent pioneers, but it was a leap in the dark, which we can pardon. For us, it would be a leap into the dark from the light.

URIAH SMITH Uriah Smith is a unique case in Adventist history in a number of ways. Considering the copious corrective correspondence sent his way from Ellen White, it is evident that he was a stubborn fellow with a high

opinion of his opinions. He was also a brilliant, systematic thinker who was sometimes inclined to overshoot the mark theologically, pushing some of his ideas to extreme formulations. The stubbornness in his makeup meant he was inclined to take his positions to his death, no matter what evidence to the contrary might be presented, even by Ellen White. This is what he did with his views regarding the Sonship of Christ. Uriah Smith’s first commentary on the book of Revelation was published in 1865, titled, Thoughts Critical and Practical on the Book of Revelation. At this point in his thinking, he explicitly stated that Christ was a created being: Moreover, he is “the beginning of the creation of God.” Not the beginner, but the beginning, of the creation, the first created being, dating his existence far back before any other created being or thing, next to the self-existent and eternal God. Uriah Smith, Thoughts Critical and Practical on the Book of Revelation, p. 59 (1865) The 1881 version of the same book eliminates the explicit statement that Christ was a created being and makes a weak attempt to correct his own previous interpretation: Moreover, he is “the beginning of the creation of God.” Some understand by this language that Christ was the first created being, dating his existence far back before any other created beings or thing, next to the self-existent and eternal God. But the language does not necessarily imply this; for the words, “the beginning of the creation of God,” may simply signify that the work of creation, strictly speaking, was begun by him. Thoughts Critical and Practical on the Book of Revelation, p. 73 (1881) I say this was a weak attempt to correct himself, because, while removing the explicit idea that Jesus is a created being, Smith retains the idea that Christ had not existed at some point in eternity past and was then brought into existence by means of the Father begetting Him:

Others, however, take the word ἀρχή to mean the agent or efficient cause, which is one of the definitions of the word, understanding that Christ is the agent through whom God has created all things, but that he himself came into existence in a different manner, as he is called “the only begotten” of the Father. It would seem utterly inappropriate to apply this expression to any being created in the ordinary sense of the term. Uriah Smith, ibid., p. 73 (1881) Smith simply replaced the word “created” with the word “begotten” with no real explanation as to how there was any essential difference between the two ideas. In both cases, Christ is set forth as a caused or actualized being. Altered nomenclature notwithstanding, in both cases the bottom line in Smith’s thinking was the same: Christ had not existed, and then at some point God brought Him into existence. This appears to be where Smith decided to settle. But he didn’t just settle, he developed the concepts further in a rather odd and speculative direction. In his 1898 book, Looking Unto Jesus, Smith wrote the following: God alone is without beginning. At the earliest epoch when a beginning could be,—a period so remote that to finite minds it is essentially eternity,—appeared the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1. This uncreated Word was the Being, who, in the fulness of time, was made flesh, and dwelt among us. His beginning was not like that of any other being in the universe. It is set forth in the mysterious expressions, “his [God’s] only begotten Son” (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9), “the only begotten of the Father” (John 1:14), and, “I proceeded forth and came from God.” John 8:42. Thus it appears that by some divine impulse or process, not creation, known only to Omniscience, and possible only to Omnipotence, the Son of God appeared. And then the Holy Spirit (by an infirmity of translation called, “the Holy Ghost”), the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the divine afflatus and medium of their power, representative of them both (Psalm 139:7), was in existence also. Uriah Smith, Looking Unto Jesus, p. 10 (1898) With the Son, the evolution of deity, as deity, ceased. All else, of things animate or inanimate, has come in by creation of the Father and the Son

—the Father the antecedent cause, the Son the acting agent through whom all has been wrought. Uriah Smith, ibid., p. 13 (1898) Smith tries so hard to make sense of Jesus being God and yet begotten, that he gets himself into some deep trouble. The man was a prooftext machine. More than any other pioneer of the Advent movement, he perfected the art of assembling Bible verses to prove doctrinal points. To this day, many of the prooftext arguments he formulated more than a century ago are used by Adventist preachers. But for all its helpfulness, if we are not careful to remain theologically obedient to the narrative of Scripture, the prooftext method carries great liability. Prooftexting as a primary method of Bible study can create myopic vision and easily lead to the manufacturing of false teachings. The truth of Scripture belongs to those who read the whole story and comprehend the big picture. Micromanaging verses to extract from them more than they actually say is the breeding ground of heresy. If I am not careful to take in the entire book, I can use the Bible to contradict the Bible. Scripture is saying something in its big picture, but I can use a few biblical texts to build an argument that defies that big picture. That’s what Smith is doing here, unwittingly, no doubt. And that’s what the current anti-trinitarian advocates are doing as they follow Smith’s legacy. I’m sure there is no ill intent, but the prooftext approach is notorious for getting people painted into theological corners they feel obligated to defend because “the Bible says” thus and such in this or that given verse. Yes, the Bible says Jesus is God’s “only begotten Son.” But if we fail to pan out and see where this language comes from in the larger body of Scripture, we are liable to slide into philosophical efforts to make sense of the theological weirdness that arises from the notion that a greater God gave birth to a lesser God. In the word “God,” we hear eternal, while in the word “begotten” we hear a point of beginning. To resolve that tension, we can either allow the Bible to define what it means when speaking of Christ being “begotten” as God’s Son, or we can invent metaphysical explanations that turn God into an evolving being. Smith chose the latter approach.

The Bible says nothing about the “evolution of deity,” whatever that might mean in Smith’s mind. Quite simply, it is a made-up idea that Smith feels obligated to manufacture in order to consistently maintain his premise that Jesus was both a divine being and a caused being. He is reaching for coherence, yet fails. If Jesus is God (there are verses that say He is), and if Jesus was begotten of God (there are verses that say that, too), well, then—and here comes the massive leap of logic—that must mean God underwent some kind of evolutionary development that somehow split the divine Son off from the divine Father. It sounds deep, but it’s not. It’s just unbiblical speculation that creates bigger problems than the one it attempts to solve. Of course, the “evolution of deity” is nowhere taught in the Bible, and, of course, it is not true. It is a blunt contradiction to speak of God evolving, on at least two counts: 1. The notion of an evolving God demands that we conceive of God as gradually becoming something more and more over time, eventually becoming what? 2. And the notion of an evolving God requires that we reason backwards to conceive of God as having been something less in the earlier evolutionary process, all the way back to having been what? Smith was trying too hard to interpret the word “begotten” isolated from the Old Testament narrative, and his effort got him off into some strange philosophical weeds. If he had simply asked the question, What does the Bible itself mean when it speaks of Jesus as God’s only begotten Son?, he might have discovered that sonship is a big deal within the biblical narrative, initiated in the Old Testament and ultimately fulfilled in Christ. By looking at the Bible’s big picture and taking note of the sonship thread of the story, Smith might have realized, Hey, wait a minute, the Bible defines what it means by what it says. Jesus is God’s only begotten covenant Son, the one and only faithful offspring of humankind, in the lineage of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, David, and Solomon. The title, “only begotten Son,” designates Christ as the Messiah who lived up to the sonship ideal within the human story, and it has nothing to do with the evolution of deity. With regard to His innate ontology, Christ is and always was God, just as Scripture repeatedly testifies. With

regard to His covenantal mission for the human race, He is the Son of God. But Smith never had that epiphany. His theological gymnastics do pose a warning to us, however. Whenever a Bible student tries to prove that divinity is a quality of being that can be created, birthed, or, by whatever other means, brought into existence, pantheism lies right around the corner. That is what we discover in the next chapter.

CONCLUDING ASSESSMENT What, then, are we to make of the anti-trinitarianism of the Adventist pioneers? While they offered some support toward an anti-trinitarian position, it is clear that they were on a trajectory of study that led the Seventh-day Adventist Church to become trinitarian, but without subscribing to a trinitarianism that reduces God to one being projecting three persons. They were attempting to reject modalism. Because the Advent pioneers began with a concern for the divine personhood of Christ distinct from that of the Father, the church was able to formulate a genuinely relational doctrine of God, or what we might call a Covenantal Trinitarianism, as opposed to modalism. We can conclude, then, that the current position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is true to the core concern of the early Advent pioneers and that we are indebted to them for pointing us in the right direction. The church followed through to work out the pioneer’s core concern by developing a trinitarianism that conceives of God as three distinct persons who are one in nature and character. The Adventist pioneers were Bible students. They were in process. The farthest thing from their minds was that God’s people would take any of their early statements on theological subjects and canonize them as final authority. They were forward-thinking, studious individuals who

expected the church to continue its development. It is simply not in keeping with the spirit of the pioneers to exalt their early statements as final authority on the Trinity. It is evident from their writings that the Adventist pioneers had the same blind spot some still have today, to which we have given specific attention in my previous book, The Sonship of Christ: Exploring the Covenant Identity of God and Man. Because they were largely committed to the prooftext method of Bible study rather than engaging with Scripture as a cohesive narrative, they failed to see that the New Testament usage of the terms “only begotten” and “firstborn Son” are grounded in the Old Testament story. If they had seen the Old Testament source material for the Sonship of Christ, they would have no doubt dispensed with their sense of obligation to believe that Christ was a lesser God brought into existence by a greater God. I conclude, then, that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Advent pioneers. There is a reason why the Seventh-day Adventist Church became solidly trinitarian while avoiding modalism: our pioneers pointed us in that direction, even as they themselves retained some significant blind spots. Because they rejected a trinitarianism that says God is one being projecting three forms, future Adventist scholars were able to think outside of the modalism box and formulate a richly interpersonal picture of God. And Ellen White played a major part in getting Adventism there, as we will now see.

1 A priest by the name of Arius (c. AD 250-336) held that the Father brought the Son into being through an act of creation, exalted Him to a unique position by giving Him the title “Son,” and the Son was inferior to the Father as He had a different substance/nature. That teaching is called “Arianism." Modifying the view of Arius, semi-Arianism claims that the Son came into existence by emanating from the Father at some time prior to His incarnation and therefore He has the same divine nature as the Father. Whereas some proponents of semi-Arianism believe the Son to be inferior to the Father, other proponents of Semi-Arianism stress His equality with the Father.

2 Ontology explores the nature of being, becoming, and existing. Within theology, anti-trinitarianism claims that the Bible's usage of the word “begotten" in connection to Christ refers to His ontology, or how and when He began to exist. 3 Metaphysics explores abstract concepts related to the nature and substance of existing things, including the cause of things and their relation to time and space. Within theology, anti-trinitarianism claims that Christ is divine by the Father’s will, but not of the same or equal divine substance with the Father, in that the Father caused His existence.

“An interpersonal trinitarianism is the only picture of God that rules out the de-personalizing theory of pantheism, and antitrinitarianism is the theological precursor to pantheism.”

CHAPTER THREE

ELLEN WHITE’S TRINITARIAN JOURNEY

  Ellen Harmon was raised Methodist and, therefore, trinitarian. As a teenage girl, she was a follower of William Miller and believed Christ would return in the year 1844. After “the Great Disappointment,” she was one of the core group of young people who formed a fervent Bible study movement that became the Seventh-day Adventist Church. All the men named in the previous chapter were her theological friends. The difference with Ellen was . . . well . . . she was a prophet, and she was a girl. And I mean a girl. In 1844, as she began to co-lead a theological revolution with an impressive group of young men, she was a mere 17 years old. If you are not a Seventh-day Adventist, the “prophet” part may sound a little odd, at least until you read the New Testament and discover that God promised He would give the prophetic gift to His church straight down to the end of time. But regardless of whether you regard her as

possessing a unique gift of prophetic inspiration, I am confident you will find her insights inspiring, and often downright mind-blowing. The girl was on fire for Jesus and remained so into womanhood and straight on throughout her life. She could write more words in a day than most people write in a lifetime, crafting ideas into language that has served to magnify the beauty of God’s character for millions of readers for more than a hundred and fifty years now. As the special messenger to the Advent movement, she exerted a formidable influence on the Seventhday Adventist Church. But she was in a theological pickle of sorts. At the age of 18, Ellen Harmon, the Methodist-reared prophet girl, married James White, who had been a minister in an anti-trinitarian movement called the Christian Connection. Additionally, some of the other core members of the young Advent movement were anti-trinitarian. Given that she was a woman surrounded by anti-trinitarian men, whom she loved and respected, it is astounding that she never expressed in her writings any overtly anti-trinitarian views similar to what we saw from the Advent pioneers in the previous chapter. What I will suggest in this chapter is that Ellen White followed the logical trajectory of their thinking, whereas they stopped short of working out the implication of their own premise. In other words, she went where they were pointing, even while they did not. And this is an extremely important factor if we really want to understand the relation of Adventism to trinitarianism. As we discovered in the previous chapter, modalism was the core theological concern of the Advent pioneers, and it was a legitimate concern. To view them as anti-trinitarian in a general and simplistic sense is to miss the rather specific point they were endeavoring to make. They were protective of the distinct personhood of Christ. They believed that Christ was divine, that He was God, and, yet, they knew He was not one and the same person as the Father. So when they heard the idea that God was one being projecting Himself in the mode of three persons, they rightfully rejected the notion as absurd and fraught with theological problems. They rightfully insisted that Christ was God and that He was also a distinct person from the Father. But their solution to the problem was far afield of the biblical narrative, and sometimes speculative, as we

saw in the previous chapter. Considering their historical and theological setting, their insistence on the distinct divine personhood of Christ was a vital step toward building a relational doctrine of God grounded in the reality that “God is love.” They are not to be brushed aside as ignorant, but thanked for their advancements. The Advent pioneers rejected the modalism notion of the Trinity, for which they are to be commended, but they did not fully work out a trinitarian doctrine that affirms the distinct divine personhood of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Ellen White did! While some of the pioneers got stuck in varying degrees of semiArianism, Ellen White, following their lead, did not. She moved forward in the logical trajectory of their legitimate polemic against modalism, even as they did not follow her lead in tandem.

STAGES OF THOUGHT If we simply read everything Ellen White wrote regarding the nature of God, along with her understanding of salvation dynamics, a clear picture of her theological journey takes shape. The basic lay of the land in the development of her views on the Trinity can be divided roughly into three stages of thinking: Reserved—1847-1887 During this period, Ellen White made no definitive statements in favor of a Trinity theology, but neither did she make any anti-trinitarian statements. It is evident that she shared the interest of her pioneer counterparts that Christ be perceived as both divine and distinct from the Father. Emerging—1888-1897 During this period, it is evident that she was discerning that the divinity of Christ is a vital component of a clear salvation theology, in which the

atonement is a display of a truly self-sacrificing love on God’s part, by which the redemptive act is achieved by God alone. Definitive—1898-1915 During this period, Ellen White unequivocally identified the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three distinct persons, all of whom are involved in the salvation enterprise, collectively composing a “Heavenly Trio.” Jesus, she understood at this point, possesses eternal coexistence with the Father, which is “underived” from the Father. Here, too, she explicitly identified the Holy Spirit as “the third person of the Godhead.”

COVENANT LOGIC Given her close association with the Advent pioneers, it is understandable that we would find in Ellen White’s early writings, statements that can be interpreted as semi-Arian in perspective, not for what they say, but for what they do not say. As stated above, from about 1847-1887, she was reserved in her statements regarding the exact nature of Christ in relation to the Father. But there was an obvious progression in her thinking. In 1858 she described “the counsel of peace” in which the plan of salvation was mapped out. At this early stage of her thinking, she only mentions the Father and the Son as participants in the plan to save humanity, with no mention of the Holy Spirit (Spiritual Gifts, vol. 1, pp. 22-23). In 1870, the statement was expanded and published in volume one of Spirit of Prophecy, p. 45, but still no mention of the Holy Spirit. In 1890, the statement was further expanded in Patriarchs and Prophets, but still no mention was made of the Holy Spirit. But eleven years later, in 1901, the statement was expanded yet again, and this time a clear trinitarian framing is in place: The Godhead was stirred with pity for the race, and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit gave themselves to the working out of the plan of redemption. In order to fully carry out this plan, it was decided that Christ, the only begotten Son of God, should give Himself an offering

for sin. What line can measure the depth of this love? The Australian Union Conference Recorder, April 1, 1901 Here, Ellen White clearly portrays the plan of salvation as the joint venture of the three members of “the Godhead.” We can count them— one, two, three—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. She says they “gave themselves to the working out of the plan of redemption.” She portrays each of the three with individual emotion (“stirred”) and individual volition (“gave”). Another early statement that is often interpreted as anti-trinitarian is found in the Spirit of Prophecy book series, vol. 1: The great Creator assembled the heavenly host, that he might in the presence of all the angels confer special honor upon his Son. The Son was seated on the throne with the Father, and the heavenly throng of holy angels was gathered around them. The Father then made known that it was ordained by himself that Christ, his Son, should be equal with himself; so that wherever was the presence of his Son, it was as his own presence. The word of the Son was to be obeyed as readily as the word of the Father. His Son he had invested with authority to command the heavenly host. Especially was his Son to work in union with himself in the anticipated creation of the earth and every living thing that should exist upon the earth. His Son would carry out his will and his purposes, but would do nothing of himself alone. The Father’s will would be fulfilled in him. Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 1, p. 17, 1870 This statement is taken by anti-trinitarians as a description of the point at which God informed the angels that He had conferred deity on Jesus and ordained that Christ should be equal in divine status with Himself. There are serious problems with this interpretation. If divinity is something that can be conferred upon a being who is not inherently divine, then what is to stop us from thinking that we ourselves might be made divine? Again, we will get there shortly in our study. Certainly, the above statement can be interpreted as semi-Arian, but it doesn’t have to be and, as we are about to discover, shouldn’t be. What

some read into the statement is the idea that Christ’s equality with the Father was at some point ordained by the Father, suggesting a change of status for Christ from non-divine to divine. But the statement doesn’t actually say that. She leaves much unsaid and, over time, greater clarity came to her mind. The above statement is in volume one of the fourbook series titled, Spirit of Prophecy, published in 1870. In 1890, her book Patriarchs and Prophets became the more developed and complete version of the same material. Notice what she added: There had been no change in the position or authority of Christ. Lucifer’s envy and misrepresentation and his claims to equality with Christ had made necessary a statement of the true position of the Son of God; but this had been the same from the beginning. Many of the angels were, however, blinded by Lucifer’s deceptions. Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 38, 1890 As already mentioned, during her early years Ellen White was surrounded by formidable theological minds that she respected. In their strong rejection of modalism, they tended to denounce the Trinity doctrine without qualification. So the fact that she steered clear of making any explicit anti-trinitarian statements is remarkable. It is an evidence of God’s guiding influence upon her mind. Eventually, she did something extremely insightful, which turned Adventism in a distinctly trinitarian direction, but without adopting modalism. She followed the lead of her brothers where they had a legitimate point, but she did not follow them where they were wrong. As we noted in the previous chapter, in 1877 James White began moving away from his anti-trinitarian roots by thinking in terms of “the Father and the Son before the worlds were made” constituting “a creating and law administering firm of equal power.” Then a change occurred for God. James says, “Christ steps out of this firm” in order to become the “mediator between God and man.” This was an ingenious theological move, because it coined language to describe God, as God was, prior to the creation-salvation enterprise.

Building on her husband’s idea, Ellen White later began using similar language, referring to God as “the three great powers of heaven.” Whereas James only included the Father and the Son in the divine “firm of equal power,” she included the Holy Spirit: As at our baptism we pledged ourselves to Him, and received the ordinance (of baptism) in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, these three great powers of heaven pledged themselves to work in our behalf, not only to begin, but to finish our faith. General Conference Bulletins, April 14, 1901 Our sanctification is the work of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is the fulfillment of the covenant that God has made with those who bind themselves up with Him, to stand with Him, with His Son, and with His Spirit in holy fellowship. Have you been born again? Have you become a new being in Christ Jesus? Then co-operate with the three great powers of heaven who are working in your behalf. Signs of the Times, June 19, 1901 Those who submit to the solemn rite of baptism pledge themselves to devote their lives to God’s service; and the three great powers of heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, pledge Themselves to cooperate with them, to work in and through them. As men and women thus enter into covenant relation with God, they take the name of Christian. Signs of the Times, March 11, 1903 Keep yourselves where the three great powers of heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, can be your efficiency. These powers work with the one who gives himself unreservedly to God. Southern Watchman, February 23, 1904 You were buried with Christ in baptism and raised to newness of life. And the three great powers of heaven pledged themselves to cooperate with you in your efforts to live the new life in Christ. Then should we not praise him with every breath? The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, June 15, 1905

There are three living persons of the Heavenly Trio; in the name of these three great powers— the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit— those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and these powers will co-operate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ. Evangelism, p. 615, 1905 In these statements we have before us clear and definitive language that showed up repeatedly in Ellen White’s later public sermons, letters, and articles, demonstrating unequivocally that she was solidly trinitarian in her doctrine of God. In keeping with the original concern of the Advent pioneers against modalism, her trinitarianism repeatedly affirmed the distinct divine personhood of the three members of “the Heavenly Trio.” But—and this is vital—she wasn’t merely trinitarian for the sake of holding one factual theological position as opposed to another. Rather, she discerned in the trinitarian view of God the necessary theological framework for grasping the “covenant” purpose of God. And this is the vital point. Pause to really think it through. In keeping with the biblical narrative, Ellen viewed the plan of salvation as a covenant enterprise. That is to say, she understood that salvation is grounded in the social reality of God and achieves our induction into God’s social reality.1 She understood that baptism is performed in the name of “the three great powers” to signify, precisely, that we have entered into “covenant relation with God.” Baptism, she discerned, is a symbolic ritual through which we identify with the covenantal love that exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, we indicate that we have chosen God’s love—as it exists between the members of “the Heavenly Trio”—as the pattern of our own existence. By contrast, if God is conceived of as an absolute, non-social singularity, by which Christ was eventually generated and from which the Holy Spirit emanates as an impersonal influence, then God cannot be conceived of as essentially covenantal in God’s own makeup, and salvation cannot be conceived of as our restoration to covenantal relationship with God. Without a trinitarian doctrine of God, the entire covenant logic of Scripture breaks down. Discerning this, Ellen White

was explicitly trinitarian on the vital premise of Scripture’s overall covenant framework. But not everybody in Adventism was smelling what the prophet was cooking.

FORK IN THE THEOLOGICAL ROAD The year 1898 was extremely significant for the theological future of Adventism. That year two major denominational books were published, one written by Uriah Smith and the other written by Ellen White, arguably the two most influential voices in Adventism at that point. We have already encountered Smith’s book in the previous chapter, titled, Looking Unto Jesus. In its pages, Smith made his most creative and final effort to steer Adventism in the anti-trinitarianism direction. Whereas he had earlier said Christ was a “created” being, now he ran with the word “begotten” as the way Christ came into existence, insisting at the same time that Christ was “uncreated.” Of course, Smith didn’t exactly explain how being begotten into existence is different than being created. But he took a wild stab at it by writing, “With the Son, the evolution of deity, as deity, ceased.” Whatever that means. Apparently, Smith was hoping the church would follow him into this odd and blatantly unbiblical territory without requiring scriptural evidence. And that may well have been the theological future of Adventism, except for the fact that there was a prophet in Israel. Ellen White’s 1898 book was titled, The Desire of Ages. You can imagine the buzz in Adventism as, on the one hand, ministers and members read Smith’s evolution-of-God concept and, on the other hand, they read Ellen White’s crystal-clear words: In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived. The Desire of Ages, p. 530

That single, well-crafted, unequivocally clear statement meant that the days of Arianism and semi-Arianism in Adventism were numbered. In the same book, she wrote of the Holy Spirit: Sin could be resisted and overcome only through the mighty agency of the Third Person of the Godhead, who would come with no modified energy, but in the fullness of divine power. The Desire of Ages, p. 671 Looking Unto Jesus was the last anti-trinitarian book ever published by an official Seventh-day Adventist publishing house. It had just one print run in the United States and quickly went the way of book extinction. The Desire of Ages, on the other hand, has been in continuous print in multiple languages for more than 120 years. And yet, even as The Desire of Ages came off the press and solidified Adventism’s future as decidedly trinitarian, there was a major theological crisis brewing. As the anti-trinitarian view was fading and Ellen White was becoming more pronounced in her trinitarian orientation, another manifestation of anti-trinitarianism was trying to press its way to prominence, this time in the form of what Ellen White identified as “pantheism.”

THE KELLOGG CRISIS Imagine receiving a letter from Ellen White containing these lines: You are not definitely clear on the personality of God, which is everything to us as a people. You have virtually destroyed the Lord God Himself. Letter to J.H. Kellogg, March 16, 1903 The recipient of the letter was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Of course, Ellen White was speaking with passion in order to make her point. She was not suggesting that Kellogg had literally destroyed God. Rather, he had committed a kind of theological homicide of God, first in his own mind and then in the minds of those who were imbibing his Christianized version of pantheism.

In 1903, an unfortunate book was published by Dr. J.H. Kellogg, titled, The Living Temple. The book is full of beautiful insights, which Ellen White acknowledged, but it also contained what she characterized as the theological destruction of God. She was referring to those parts of the book containing pantheistic sentiments, which essentially made God synonymous with nature and, therefore, synonymous with humans. At the simplest level, Kellogg articulated his new idea like this: There is a clear, complete, satisfactory explanation of the most subtle, the most marvelous phenomena of nature—namely, an infinite intelligence working out its purposes. God is the explanation of nature— not a God outside of nature, but in nature, manifesting himself through and in all the objects, movements, and varied phenomena of the universe. The Living Temple, p. 28 Ellen White responded to the publication of The Living Temple with a directness and strength befitting the role of a prophet: I am authorized to say to you that some of the sentiments regarding the personality of God, as found in the book Living Temple, are opposed to the truths revealed in the Word of God. Manuscript Releases, vol. 21, p. 171, 1903 The theory that He is an essence, pervading everything, is one of Satan’s most subtle devices. I warn you to beware of being led to accept theories leading to any such view. I tell you, my brother, that the most spiritual-minded Christians are liable to be deceived by these beautiful, seducing, flattering theories. But in the place of honoring God, these theories, in the minds of those who receive them, bring Him down to a low level, where He is nothingness. ibid., p. 172, 1903 In the book Living Temple there is presented the alpha of deadly heresies. The omega will follow, and will be received by those who are not willing to heed the warning God has given. Selected Messages, vol. 1, p. 200, 1904 Kellogg couldn’t see the problem. Ellen White saw

something extremely dangerous in pantheism that eluded the brilliant doctor’s grasp. As intelligent as he was, he was not reasoning his theory through to its dark conclusion. In October of 1903, Ellen White wrote a letter to E.J. Waggoner, warning him to “be on your guard” against Kellogg’s pantheistic “theories regarding the nature and character of God, . . . incorrect views regarding the personality of God.” Then she made a startling connection: I have seen the results of these fanciful views of God in apostasy, spiritualism, freelovism. The free-love tendencies of these teachings were so concealed that it was difficult to present them in their real character. Until the Lord presented it to me, I knew not what to call it, but I was instructed to call it unholy spiritual love. Manuscript Releases, vol. 3, p. 351, 1903 By “freelovism” she means exactly what the dictionary defines the word to mean: “the doctrine or practice of having sexual relations without marriage.” We know this is what she has in mind because later in this letter she warns of “the archdeceiver tempting several of our ministers, teachers, and medical workers” with “charming pictures of women whom they have found congenial, suggesting that in the future life they will be united to the one who is so congenial and whom they will ever love throughout the ages of eternity.” Two months later she wrote another letter warning that “freelovism” can be a dangerous result of “the doctrine of an impersonal God, diffused through nature.” She wrote: The doctrine that all were holy had led to the belief that the affections of the sanctified were never in danger of leading astray. The result of this belief was the fulfillment of the evil desires of hearts which, though professedly sanctified, were far from purity of thought and practice. . . . Pantheistic theories are not sustained by the Word of God. The light of His truth shows that these theories are soul-destroying agencies. Darkness is their element, sensuality their sphere. They gratify the

natural heart and give leeway to inclination. Separation from God is the result of accepting them. Pacific Union Recorder, December 31, 1903 Ellen White discerned a connection between pantheism, spiritualism, and freelovism. The connection is obvious, once you see it. The moment God is reduced to an impersonal force pervading all of nature, including human nature, it is only a small step from there to imagine that all natural impulses are from God and, therefore, good. Now take a deep breath and think carefully with me so that we can discern the connection between Kellogg’s pantheism and antitrinitarianism. In 1909, Ellen White employed a unique and brilliant word to define the problem with Kellogg’s pantheism: The book, Living Temple, is an illustration of this work, the writer of which declared in its support that its teachings were the same as those found in the writings of Mrs. White. Again and again we shall be called to meet the influence of men who are studying sciences of satanic origin, through which Satan is working to make a nonentity of God and of Christ. Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9, pp. 67-68 This is an incredibly insightful assessment of the core problem with pantheism. It makes “a nonentity of God.” By deifying nature, God as a personal entity is banished from existence—not literally, but from people’s imaginations—at which point each individual occupies the pinnacle of their own reality. And at that point, anything goes morally. As it began to dawn on Kellogg that Ellen White was absolutely not going to endorse The Living Temple, he began to scramble for a solution that might earn her approval of the book. He articulated his solution to A.G. Daniells, who was the General Conference president at this time. Daniells wrote to Ellen White’s son, Willie White, to explain Kellogg’s proposed fix of the book:

Ever since the council closed, I have felt that I should write you confidentially regarding Dr. Kellogg’s plans for revising and republishing The Living Temple. . . . He said that some days before coming to the council, he had been thinking the matter over, and began to see that he had made a slight mistake in expressing his views. He said that all the way along he had been troubled to know how to state the character of God and his relation to his creation. . . He then stated that his former views regarding the trinity had stood in his way of making a clear and absolutely correct statement; but that within a short time he had come to believe in the trinity and could now see pretty clearly where all the difficulty was, and believed that he could clear the matter up satisfactorily. He told me that he now believed in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; and his view was that it was God the Holy Ghost, and not God the Father, that filled all space, and every living thing. He said if he had believed this before writing the book, he could have expressed his views without giving the wrong impression the book now gives. I placed before him the objections I found in the teaching, and tried to show him that the teaching was so utterly contrary to the gospel that I did not see how it could be revised by changing a few expressions. We argued the matter at some length in a friendly way; but I felt sure that when we parted, the doctor did not understand himself, nor the character of his teaching. And I could not see how it would be possible for him to flop over, and in the course of a few days fix the book up so that it would be all right. Letter from A.G. Daniells to W.C. White, October 29, 1903 In other words, Kellogg originally formulated his pantheistic theology on the premise of an anti-trinitarian orientation. It was anti-trinitarianism that allowed him to reduce God to a “nonentity.” Clearly, he understood that Ellen White was a believer in the doctrine of the Trinity, hence his effort to fix the problem in his book by adopting what he thought would be a Trinitarian view of God and thus warrant her approval. Once Kellogg saw that Ellen White was denouncing his book as a dangerous

theory that depersonalizes God, he decided to offer up an altered version of his theology that he thought would suffice to make the book acceptable. What was his solution? He crafted what he imagined to be a modified version of the Trinity doctrine in which he suggested that God the Father is a personal being, God the Son is a personal being, but the Holy Spirit is not a personal being, but rather the “God” that pervades all of nature as an impersonal power. But Kellogg still missed the point. Ellen White’s position was that all three members of the Trinity are personal beings, not just the Father and the Son. From the moment he began articulating his pantheism, as early as 1897, Ellen White began ramping up her trinitarian theology. She did this, first, by affirming the eternal coexistence of Christ with the Father, insisting that Christ is God in the highest sense. Secondly, she affirmed that the Holy Spirit is as much a personal being as the Father and the Son. For rapid-fire clarity, here is a flyby of her language in this regard between 1897 and 1906: On the eternal distinct divine personhood of Christ: 1897—He is the eternal, self-existent Son. Evangelism, p. 615 1898—. . . the self-existent One . . . The Desire of Ages, p. 469 1898—In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived. ibid., p. 530 1900—Christ is the preexistent, self-existent Son of God. The Signs of the Times, August 29, 1900 1905—From all eternity Christ was united with the Father. The Signs of the Times, August 2, 1905

1906—From everlasting He was the Mediator of the covenant. Review and Herald, April 5, 1906 1906—Christ was God essentially, and in the highest sense. Review and Herald, April 5, 1906 On the eternal distinct divine personhood of the Holy Spirit: 1893—The Holy Spirit . . . is a distinct personality. Manuscript Releases, vol. 20, p. 324 1897—. . . the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. Evangelism, p. 617 1906—The Holy Spirit is a person. ibid., p. 616 On the triune nature of God: 1901—. . . the eternal heavenly dignitaries. ibid., p. 616 1905—Three living persons of the Heavenly Trio . . . ibid., p. 615 1905—Three highest powers in heaven . . . ibid., p. 617 1905—. . . three great powers—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ibid., p. 615 So, then, from Ellen White’s standpoint, Kellogg’s almost-trinitarian fix of his theology came abysmally short of the actual truth. While he was suggesting that the Holy Spirit is the impersonal energy of God pervading all of nature, she intentionally and repeatedly employed the word “person” to describe the Holy Spirit. But what’s the big deal?

Why does it matter? Here’s the real point of John Harvey Kellogg’s story: he built his pantheism theory by following, to their logical conclusion, the antitrinitarian views held by the Advent pioneers. The pioneers were not pantheists, but the logical underpinnings for pantheism lay just beneath the surface of their Arian leanings, and Kellogg was smart enough to trace the logic forward. Ironically, and as is often the case in the early developments of a concept, while the pioneers were rightly pushing back on modalism in order to defend the distinct personhood of Christ, they were unwittingly holding to a doctrine of God that ultimately ends up in the same place—namely, with a depersonalized picture of God. The point is a simple and vital one: Any theology that begins by reducing God to an absolute singularity, void of eternal relational dynamics, logically erases the personhood of God and ends up imagining God to be an impersonal force. If God, ultimately, is a solitary one, then God, ultimately, is a non-relational, impersonal power, or, as Ellen termed it, a “nonentity.” Kellogg simply reasoned forward from the anti-trinitarian premise that God is a solitary self, to the penultimate conclusion that God is an impersonal force, and then to the ultimate conclusion that God, as an impersonal force, pervades all of nature. If God is a solitary self, from which Christ eventually came into existence, and from which the Holy Spirit emanates as an influence, then Kellogg’s pantheism theory is conceivable. But if God is an interpersonal social dynamic of three personal beings who are one in relational love, then pantheism is inconceivable. To demonstrate the connections, I will offer an ontological argument for the existence of God as a social unit. 1. To be a personal being requires a state of selfconsciousness/awareness.

2. To be self-aware, is to be aware of one’s self as a subject of the awareness of others. 3. Therefore, if God exists as a personal being at all, God necessarily exists as a relational dynamic of more than one personal being. Or we can reason it through like this: Personhood is necessarily a state of self-awareness in relation to other persons. Personhood cannot exist, therefore, without interpersonal relationship. That is, personhood requires more than one person in order to be a functional reality. By contrast, the absolute solitary existence of an absolutely solitary person is, therefore, an incoherent idea. It is a non-concept, and reduces God to what Ellen called “a nonentity.” To exist outside of interpersonal relationship is to not exist at all as a person. On the other hand, if God exists as a personal being, God necessarily exists as personal beings, plural, in a relational dynamic of more than one person. Therefore, on purely rational, deductive grounds, the Trinity is not merely a theoretical idea, but is logically necessary to the existence of a personal God! If God is not a social dynamic, God is not. And if God is not a social dynamic, the only theory of God that remains is pantheism. Kellogg simply went where anti-trinitarianism logically leads. If God is a solitary self, God can be conceived of in terms of power, but not in terms of love. And if God is conceived of in terms of impersonal power, Kellogg simply took the logical next step by claiming that God pervades all of nature as the power that animates all life. But if God exists in a social dynamic of three personal beings who are one in essential nature, God can be conceived of in terms of unselfish love. And if God can be conceived of in terms of unselfish love, which is the very function of personhood, pantheism is inconceivable. Really, only two options exist: either some form of pantheism is true (God is an impersonal force that pervades all nature), or trinitarianism is

true (God exists in an interpersonal relational dynamic of three distinct persons who are one in love). What cannot be true is that God ultimately exists as a solitary person. “Solitary person” is an oxymoron. A person, to be a person, either exists in relationship with other persons, or not at all. God, as one personal being, occupying the totality of reality way back before Christ existed, is a logical impossibility. Therefore, an interpersonal trinitarianism is the only picture of God that rules out the de-personalizing theory of pantheism, and anti-trinitarianism is the theological precursor to pantheism, whether the advocates of the theory have thought it all the way through or not. It makes perfect sense, then, that Ellen White found it necessary to articulate a robust trinitarian doctrine of God in response to Kellogg’s pantheism. With extraordinary insight, connecting all the theological dots, her response to pantheism/panentheism was to define God as a “Heavenly Trio” of coeternal divine persons. In November of 1905, Ellen White wrote a general letter to church leaders that opened with, “I have not been able to sleep during the past night.” The source of her anxiety, again, was the influence of Kellogg in disseminating depersonalized ideas about God. In this letter, her clarity on the personal nature of God reached a high point. She wrote: The Father cannot be described by the things of earth. The Father is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and is invisible to mortal sight. The Son is all the fullness of the Godhead manifested. The Word of God declares Him to be “the express image of His person.” “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Here is shown the personality of the Father. The Comforter that Christ promised to send after He ascended to heaven, is the Spirit in all the fullness of the Godhead, making manifest the power of divine grace to all who receive and believe in Christ as a personal Savior. There are three living persons of the Heavenly Trio; in the name of these three great powers—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and

these powers will co-operate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ. Evangelism, pp. 614-615; Manuscript 21, 1906, written in November of 1905 Words could not be clearer. Ellen White is here combating pantheism with a trinitarian vision of God and essentially issuing a warning that anti-trinitarianism is the logical precursor to pantheism. Kellogg was formulating his pantheistic theology as the logical outworking of an anti-trinitarian view of God. In response, Ellen White insisted that God consists of “three living persons of the Heavenly Trio.” The language she uses is redundant for emphasis. There are “three,” she says, and they are a “Trio.” And each one of the three is a “person.” Her clarity level here should be enough to settle the Trinity debate for every Seventh-day Adventist. We cannot not get it, unless we simply do not want to. But the roots of pantheism reach far deeper in history than Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and we would do well to understand those roots. That’s where we will go in the next chapter.

1 See my book The Sonship of Christ for a detailed exposition of “covenant" as the relational framework of the plan of salvation.

“If God is an absolute singularity, there is no personal God at all, but only impersonal power, friendless energy, and loveless natural process.”

CHAPTER FOUR

A GATEWAY TO PANTHEISM

  In his remarkable introduction to existentialism, Irrational Man (1958), William Barrett makes an incisive observation regarding the fundamental fork in the intellectual road: Hebraism and Hellenism—between these two points of influence moves our world. We all live within intellectual traditions that hail from either Hebrew or Greek patterns of thought, and most of us are a mixed (and often “mixed up”) combination of elements from both. We tend to make sense of reality through one of these two paradigmatic lenses. The history of thought is more complex than that, but not much more. Whether we know why we think the way we do or not, no mind is an island of originality in the ocean of ideas. What, then, does it mean to conceptualize in Hebrew compared to Greek? Well, panning way out, it means something like this: • concrete vs abstract

• paradoxical vs polemical • holistic vs dualistic • dynamic vs static open vs closed • free vs determined The line between these two tracks of thought is not without some overlap, but the line is sharp enough to represent two significantly divergent ways of processing reality. There is a reason why the formal educational system of Western civilization emphasizes abstract, dialectic argument (pitting one idea against another) over paradoxical tension (endeavoring to synthesize the truths that lie at both ends of any given subject spectrum). There is a reason why we imagine that we live in a universe with a divergence of value between the body and the soul, the seen and the unseen, the earth and heaven, as if all that is physical is bad and transitory while that which is immaterial is good and eternal. There is a reason why so many people operate on the assumption that “everything happens for a reason,” that when a person dies “it was their time to go,” and that when pretty much anything happens, it is because “God is in control” or “God has a plan” or “God is up to something.” And there is a reason why God is thought of by many people in terms of power and control, rather than love and freedom. Western culture is immersed in Greek thought. We’re all philosophical pagans in our basic orientation to reality, unless we deliberately receive and nurture the Hebrew revelation of God given through the prophets as the one radically different and utterly exquisite alternative.

PLATO Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived from about 428–348 BC. It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence Plato’s thinking has had on the Western world. British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, says, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality). Plato’s concept of True Form versus illusion suggests that there is some ultimate something that is real, perfect, immaterial, immutable,1 and impassible.2 Compared to the True Form, everything else is unreal, because everything we see in our physical realm and everything we think about in our conceptual realm only approximates that which is perfectly real. From this premise, thinkers following Plato imagined God to be absolute in the sense of constituting, or at least controlling, all of reality. And this would mean that nothing exists that is not God manifested in various forms, making the divine reality synonymous with all of reality. In a word, pantheism. Pan—All Theo—God Pantheism—All is God and God is all.

ARISTOTLE Following Plato’s philosophical vision of the absolute, Aristotle (384322 BC), who was Plato’s protégé, articulated God as the Unmoved Mover. That is, God causes all movement in the universe, while remaining forever unmoved Himself. God determines all events and outcomes, and, yet, God is completely unaffected by all events and outcomes by virtue of the fact that all events and outcomes are of His own doing. Because God is really all there is, everything that happens is simply an extension of God, or God’s will. Therefore, no genuine emotional response arises from God, because nothing happens that He does not cause. Free will, therefore, is an illusion. God, the Absolute, is the doer of all things that are done.

In a word, determinism.3 Or, in layman’s terms, destiny or fate.

PLOTINUS Jump forward now some 500 years after Plato and Aristotle, and meet a fella by the name of Plotinus, a Hellenistic philosopher who lived from about 204 to 270 in Campania, a region in southern Italy. Plotinus is regarded as the first neoplatonist, meaning he initiated a renewed interest in Plato’s thinking and offered his own interpretations of the ancient philosopher. The key idea Plotinus extracted from Plato was monism. According to Plotinus, based on Plato’s True Form concept, reality consists of a single eternal principle that Plotinus called, “The One.” Everything that exists came from The One, and everything is of one essential substance with The One. Again, the core idea coming through is that everything is one thing in various projected forms. All there is, is The One. All distinction and autonomy is illusion. There is no such thing as free relationship between autonomous agents.

SABELLIUS Living about the same time as Plotinus and active for a time in Italy, there was a priest by the name of Sabellius. While we have no record of these two men meeting, the theology of Sabellius was pretty much a Christianized version of the neoplatonism of Plotinus. The theological perspective formulated by Sabellius became known as “modalism.” He suggested that the God of Scripture is the One True God and manifests Himself in three modes of expression—Father, Son, and Spirit. To say that there is One True God, necessarily means there can be no actual other divine person who is God in the same way the Father is God. To say that the Son is God, and to say that the Holy Spirit is God,

must mean, therefore, that they are manifestations of the Father in different forms. But they are not, in reality, persons distinct from the Father. Karl Barth articulates modalism like this: As God is in Himself Father from all eternity, He begets Himself as the Son from all eternity. As He is the Son from all eternity, He is begotten of Himself as the Father from all eternity. In this eternal begetting of Himself and being begotten of Himself, He posits Himself a third time as the Holy Spirit, that is, as the love which unites Him in Himself. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1956 According to Barth, since God is a solitary self, the Trinity does not present to us an actual self-to-other relational dynamic, but rather a selfto-self monism in which the Father is both the Son and the Holy Spirit manifesting Himself through these two modes of expression. Sound familiar?

ARIUS Arius of Alexandria was a priest and theologian who lived from about 256 to 336. We have none of his original writings. We can, however, construct an accurate understanding of his position, or at least the position that came to bear his name, from the surviving written works of contemporaries who quoted him. Socrates of Constantinople, a historian of the time, quotes Arius as follows: If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he had his substance from nothing. Church History by Socrates of Constantinople Arius was making an effort to correct the modalism of Sabellius, but the solution he suggested failed by means of retaining the core problem of modalism, only from a different angle. He saw that modalism had the effect of making Jesus out to be the Father manifested in a different form. This would mean, of course, that the relationship between the two that we encounter in the New Testament would be a mere projection. By

making Christ a created being, distinct from the Father, Arius thought he was offering a needed correction of modalism. His position centered on the New Testament use of the word “begotten.” He overlooked the larger sonship narrative of Scripture and took the word “begotten” to describe the ontological origins of Christ, insisting that it means that there was a point at which Christ began to exist “from nothing.” And with that, Arius felt he had proven that Christ is a real person distinct from the Father, as opposed to modalism’s erasing of that vital distinction. But this merely moved the problem to a more ancient era, leaving us in precisely the same theological position given to us by modalism—namely, that God, ultimately, is a solitary self, void of relationship. In his view, Jesus was God’s anciently begotten Son, exalted to divine status by the Father, before which the Father, as the one eternal God, existed alone, without any personal divine counterpart. By making Jesus a lesser God created by a greater God, Arius apparently failed to realize that his position had the net effect of giving us yet one more version of Plato’s monism with its tendency toward pantheism. This view is what scholars call “Arianism.” There were others after Arius who modified his position slightly by suggesting that Christ was of similar substance with the Father, but not of one substance with Him. This is not, however, a significant modification because it offers no solution to the problem entailed in Arianism at the core level. If Arius had panned out far enough to take in the big story of the Bible, centering as it does on the begetting of a promised Son to redeem Adam’s lost sonship status, he may have seen that Christ is clearly set forth as the Adamic, Abrahamic, Davidic Son of God in a messianic sense, “begotten” through a chosen human lineage as the covenantally faithful Second Adam. He may also have noticed that this fully human Son of God was declared to be none other than “God manifested in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16), “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), “the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). God, very God, in the human person of Jesus Christ, was “begotten” of the Holy Spirit through the womb of woman into our world. And if Arius had noticed all of that, he may have realized that the word “begotten,” with reference to Christ, has nothing to do with His metaphysical beginnings, long ago. The Bible tells no

story about one great God bringing a lesser God into existence. That idea appears nowhere in Scripture. It is the product of Christian thinkers trying to do theology with Greek underpinnings.

THE ADVENT PIONEERS In the previous two chapters we explored the core concern of the Advent pioneers and the development of Ellen White’s thinking regarding trinitarianism. Paying attention to exactly what the Advent pioneers were saying, we know precisely why they were resistant to trinitarianism. It is clear, as we’ve noted, that they were specifically pushing back on trinitarian modalism. Nor do we need to guess why they found the idea unacceptable, because they explicitly tell us why. Modalism collapses God the Father and God the Son into a single person, rendering the biblical description of the relationship between the two meaningless. This is what the Advent pioneers could not accept. They felt compelled to defend the divine personhood of Christ for the specific purpose of insisting that the love between the Father and the Son is an authentic interpersonal love and not a mere projected illusion. They were seeking to affirm the relational nature of God by taking one vital step in that direction, the one step they could see to take, which was to reject the Trinity as framed by modalism. Yes, the Advent pioneers came short of arriving at a definitive covenantal trinitarianism. Like Arius before them, they failed to see the sonship narrative of the Old Testament as the origin of the sonship language of the New Testament. So they felt compelled to believe that Jesus must have had a point of beginning sometime in the ancient eternal past. But that was a secondary byproduct of their real concern, which was that a clear sense of the divine personhood of Christ, distinct from the Father, be maintained. They were headed in that direction by virtue of the fact that they discerned the necessity of understanding God to be innately relational. By divine revelation, Ellen White saw where the concern of the pioneers logically leads. She realized that (1) if Christ has distinct personhood

from the Father, and (2) if Christ is Himself divine, then (3) Christ must have always coexisted with the Father, possessing within Himself “life, original, unborrowed, underived.” Reasoning further forward, she discerned (4) the divine personhood of the Holy Spirit distinct from the Father and the Son. With all these pieces in place, she concluded that (5) the Father, the Son, and the Spirit together constitute what she termed, “the Heavenly Trio.” To Ellen White’s understanding, the Father is God, but not all there is of God. The Son is God, but not all there is of God. The Holy Spirit is God, but not all there is of God. Each of the three possesses eternal, divine personhood in relation to the others and all three collectively constitute the totality of God. Viewed as Bible students engaged in a historical journey of theological development, the Advent pioneers may be regarded as vital contributors to Ellen White’s thinking and to the formulation of the church’s present trinitarian position. They need not be viewed as an embarrassing problem in our history, but rather as an important part of the solution to a crucial theological conundrum. They were honest Bible students with a completely legitimate concern regarding the trinitarianism with which they were familiar—namely, modalism. Ellen White’s treatment of the topic addressed their concern and progressed forward to articulate a richly relational trinitarianism. Nevertheless, the blind spot in the thinking of the Advent pioneers, while honest, had to be rectified, because all forms of monism, including Arianism, potentially lead to pantheism. This became evident in the case of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. A man of formidable intellect, he simply followed the semi-Arianism of the Advent pioneers where it led. He reasoned forward from the premise of God as an Absolute One, to the conclusion that God is an impersonal force that pervades all of creation. In other words, the pantheism Ellen White detected in Kellogg’s theology was built on a foundation of anti-trinitarianism.

A PRECURSOR TO PANTHEISM So why, exactly, is the anti-trinitarian doctrine a problem?

Quite simply, because it reduces God to an absolute singularity. In so doing, it paves the way to pantheism, which paves the way for freelovism! This is not difficult to understand, once you see it. But some clear thinking, in the context of the history we’ve previewed above, is vital in order to get us there. If we begin with the premise that God is a social unit of three persons who eternally coexist in a relational circle of other-centeredness, we have the conceptual premise upon which to see ourselves as freewill persons subject to moral dynamics in relation to other freewill persons. Please read that sentence again for clarity, because it really is the whole point here. Now, then, the Bible encapsulates this entire conceptual framework with the word “covenant.” Covenant is a massively beautiful truth that conveys the idea of individual persons living with relational integrity toward one another. It is the lofty idea that “God is love,” from which we deduce that we live in right relation to God and one another only when we love like God loves. Knowing God as a relational dynamic of selfgiving love is the only premise upon which a covenant construct of reality can be formulated. Stated more succinctly, knowing God as love is the only way to love. Both modalism (God as a solitary self, projecting the illusion of interpersonal relationship) and pantheism (God as synonymous with nature and therefore void of personhood) defy the entire biblical narrative of covenantal love between free persons. Both theories do this by depersonalizing God from opposite ends of the very same conceptual spectrum. Then, once we hold a view of God that is void of personhood, we have no logical premise upon which to perceive ourselves as free persons living in adjacent freedom with other free persons. By contrast, the doctrine of God hammered out by the Advent pioneers (Christ is a divine person distinct from the Father), by Ellen White (God is a “Heavenly Trio” of self-giving relational love), and by Adventist

scholarship (a definitive doctrine of the Trinity that rejects modalism in favor of three co-eternal persons), constitutes an extremely rational, theologically rich, emotionally attractive, and morally transformative doctrine of God. The anti-trinitarian doctrine that we are currently encountering around the edges of Adventism, is, essentially, a modern version of Plato’s monism or Sabellius’s modalism, which is the very idea the Advent pioneers were clumsily resisting in the early stages of the movement, and which Ellen White flatly rejected by insisting that God consists of “three living persons” who together compose a “Heavenly Trio.” Anti-trinitarianism was completely untenable for Ellen White for one simple reason: it reduces God to a solitary self. Reach back far enough into eternity past, and the anti-trinitarian scheme of thought wants us to envision God as absolutely, utterly, intrinsically, ontologically alone, which, whether they’ve thought it through rigorously enough or not, reduces God to an impersonal singularity void of love. This, the advocates of the doctrine insist, is the “One True God.” But if God is an absolute singularity, there is no personal God at all, but only impersonal power, friendless energy, and loveless natural process. And that, dear reader, is the very definition of pantheism. Anti-trinitarianism, reasoned through to its logical conclusion, is pantheism. I am not suggesting, of course, that any given anti-trinitarian is an overt, conscious pantheist, any more than Kellogg would have said, “Yeah, I’m a pantheist.” I am suggesting, however, that if a person pauses to carefully think through the logical implications of anti-trinitarianism, pantheism is the conclusion of the matter. There are many people who do not think through the implications of their beliefs. Most anti-trinitarians I’ve conversed with reject the Trinity simply because, as they say, “It’s a Catholic doctrine” and “the Adventist pioneers didn’t believe in the Trinity.” But they haven’t given much thought to the matter beyond that. Nevertheless, anti-trinitarianism is what it is, and what it is, quite simply, is a form of monism, which logically leads to pantheism. Whether or not

any given anti-trinitarian will go where their picture of God leads, is another matter. But, someone will say, “Anti-trinitarians believe in Jesus, so won’t that logically rule out pantheism for them?” Well, maybe. But then again, Kellogg believed in Jesus. The fact is, the “Jesus” of anti-trinitarianism is not the same “Jesus” the trinitarian believes in. How does Jesus figure in to the anti-trinitarian view? At some point along the way, after having been a solitary self for an eternity prior, God became a Father by birthing a Son, upon whom He conferred divine status. A greater God brought into existence a lesser God. Again, pantheism is here slipping in through the theological cracks. If the divinity of Christ is a created, begotten, caused, or otherwise, by any means, an actualized quality of being, what is to prevent us from imagining that we, too, could be made divine? And what prevents us at that point from taking the next logical step into the assumption that all of our natural urges and desires are divine? Well, not much! Anti-trinitarianism, pantheism, and free-lovism are all logically connected, as Ellen White discerned in the case of Kellogg. If we strip away labels and deal strictly in concepts, the connections are as easy to grasp as 1, 2, 3. 1. Anti-trinitarianism. Personhood is vital for relationship and relationship is vital for love. If Jesus is merely a generated extension of the Father, and if the Holy Spirit is merely an influence emanating from the Father, God is a solitary self. Relationship vanishes from the theological picture, and with it any coherent notion of love.

2. Pantheism. If God is a solitary self, and as such void of interpersonal love, God can only be thought of as an impersonal force synonymous with all the other impersonal forces in the universe, including ourselves. 3. Free-lovism. If God and the universe are one and the same, then we humans are synonymous with God. All of the natural impulses that drive us are merely manifestations of God and as such cannot be regarded as morally wrong. “Whatever is, is right,” because whatever is cannot be otherwise than it is, in a universe defined by impersonal power and void of interpersonal love. The point is a forceful one: pantheism equates God with the universe and in so doing depersonalizes God. Having depersonalized God, pantheism makes God synonymous with the energy or power that animates the natural world. If God is not a personal being, then it is inconceivable that “God is love” in any kind of interpersonal sense. And if God is synonymous with the forces and phenomena of nature, we humans are merely an extension of God and do not possess individual personhood distinct from God. All there is, is natural process, which unfolds as a deterministic cause-and-effect machine. Individual personhood, free will, right and wrong, good and evil do not actually exist. This is the basic idea Ellen White was getting at when she articulated pantheism as an idea that reduces God to a “non-entity” and portrays God as being without “personality”, or without the quality of being a person. At the end of the day, within all forms of monism, whether materialistic monism, philosophical monism, or religious monism, the foundational idea is the same: everything is really one thing and all distinction, moral agency, and love are mere illusion. So then: • Plato’s True Forms, • Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover,

• Plotinus’s theory of The One, • Sabellius’ modalism, • Arius’ God-begetting-god, • Kellogg’s “non-entity” God, • and the current anti-trinitarianism vying for attention on the edges of Adventism, • are all the same basic idea in various forms. It’s all monism, which is the foundational premise of pantheism.

FUNDAMENTAL BELIEF NUMBER TWO Due to the insistence of the Advent pioneers that the divine personhood of Christ be affirmed as distinct from that of the Father, followed by the developments in Ellen White’s thinking that led her to insist upon the distinct personhood of the Holy Spirit, as well as the co-eternality of both the Son and the Spirit with the Father, Seventh-day Adventist scholarship was able to land upon a trinitarian statement of belief that affirms both the oneness of God and the distinct personhood of each member of the Godhead. This doctrine of God is articulated in the first sentence of Fundamental Belief Number Two: There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three coeternal Persons. Simple, brilliant, beautiful clarity! What the anti-trinitarians apparently don’t realize is that this trinitarian position was arrived at by the church as the logical outworking of the theological work done by the Advent pioneers and Ellen White. While the anti-trinitarians imagine they are being true to the pioneers, the fact is

they are engaging in a kind of theological backsliding that denies the intent of the work done by our theological forebears. It is Adventist scholarship that is being true to the pioneers, not the anti-trinitarian advocates. “But Ellen White never used the word Trinity,” the anti-trinitarians argue. No, she didn’t. She did something better and far more theologically astute for her time: she took into account the legitimate concern of the pioneers and gave us descriptive language that rendered Adventism decidedly trinitarian while avoiding both modalism and pantheism. Based on a clear theological sense of the distinct personhood of God the Son, alongside the distinct personhood of God the Holy Spirit, alongside the distinct personhood of God the Father, Ellen White coined the term, “the Heavenly Trio.” To have simply said, in her historical context, “I believe in the Trinity,” would have carried the risk of being misunderstood as affirming modalism, which was the very thing her pioneer brothers were pushing back on so passionately. So she did the smart thing: she used descriptive language to intelligently convey a trinitarian vision of God that clearly communicated that there are three persons that compose one divine reality. When all the reasoning is done, human beings can only conceive of God in one of two ways: 1. God is a plurality of being, in which case God can be conceived of in terms of interpersonal love. From that premise, the creation emerging from God can be conceived of as genuinely free and morally responsible. 2. God is an absolute singularity, in which case God can only be conceived of in terms of impersonal power. From that premise, creation can only be conceived of as an extension of God with no real interpersonal freedom and no moral responsibility.

The most direct theological route to erase love from our understanding of God’s character is to depersonalize God. And the most direct route to depersonalize God is to turn God into an absolute singularity. If your theology allows you to go back far enough to finally conceive of God existing alone, without relationship, then you have effectively conceded that power, not love, is ultimate.

1 Incapable of change 2 Incapable of feeling 3 The philosophical and/or theological teaching that all events and outcomes are determined by preceding events of natural laws or by the will of God, meaning that free will does not actually exist as a cause of any event or outcome.

“The concept of ‘covenant’ constitutes a totalizing theological vision. Covenant explains everything. If you understand the idea of covenant, you understand the whole point of the Bible.”

CHAPTER FIVE

COVENANTAL TRINITARIANISM

The Bible is the story of a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. That’s it and that’s all. Examined for what it is, on its own terms, in its own voice, with its own cast of characters, the Bible is an unfolding narrative that reveals God entering into covenant relationship with human beings and then following through to keep that covenant at any and all cost to Himself, with the covenant reaching its climactic point of realization, clarity, and fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. What the Bible is not, is a speculative philosophy about the metaphysics of God. The anti-trinitarian obsession with how and when Jesus came into existence is simply not addressed in Scripture, beyond matter-offactly informing us that this human Messiah we encounter at the climax of the story is none other than God incarnate. The Bible is a Hebrew text answering Hebrew questions of covenant, not a Greek text answering Greek questions of abstract philosophy.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GOD

I’m suggesting “Covenantal Trinitarianism” as an economic theological term for what Seventh-day Adventists already believe, as expressed in Fundamental Belief Number Two. The term serves to distinguish the Adventist view of the Trinity from modalism. It achieves this by positing that God is a relational dynamic of three distinct but perfectly integrated persons, as opposed to the idea that God is one person projecting three modes of being. Taking in the big narrative arc of Scripture as a whole, a brief covenant history can be outlined something like this: 1. The Covenant Character of God: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Therefore, God is and always has been a social unit of othercentered, self-giving passion, each member of “the Heavenly Trio” living for the others with covenantal faithfulness. Genesis 1:1; John 1:1-3, 18; John 17:24 2. The Covenant of Creation: Creation is God’s love actualized in material form. God, precisely because God is love, created others in His own image, free agents with whom to share the wonder of covenantal existence. “Let Us make man in Our image,” one of the Three said to the others, “according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Within the fellowship of the triune God, creation was embarked upon as a covenant agreement. 3. The Covenant of Peace: The same love that prompted God to create humanity would move God to save humanity at any cost to Himself, if that were to become necessary. God was committed to remain covenantally faithful to the human race, even if they were to become unfaithful to Him. All three members of the Godhead agreed, even before creation, to the covenant of peace. Each one committed to their respective roles in the creation-salvation enterprise, each one committed to play their part in the “covenant of peace” (Isaiah 54:10). Isaiah 42:1-6; Isaiah 55:3; Matthew 1; Luke 1-3; John 1 4. The Covenant Promise: Because God is love, God promised to enter into complete empathetic solidarity with covenant-breaking

humanity. Of covenant necessity, God would become an actual member of the human race. In order to redeem humanity from within our own genetic realm, one of the members of the Trinity would come into our world as the Son of God, standing in Adam’s place in order to redeem Adam’s fall. The Old Testament is a covenant document, composed of promises and prophecies that foretell the eventual coming of the promised one. Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 9:6-7; Daniel 9; Romans 10:4; 2 Corinthians 1:20; Galatians 4:4-5 5. The Covenant People: In order to carry forward the promise of peace with fallen humanity, God established a corporate people through which a body of covenant promises, prophecies, and laws could be communicated to the world and through which the covenant Son of God could be born to the world, all toward the grand goal of reestablishing humanity within the relational parameters of covenantal love. Genesis 12:1-3; Exodus 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 4:5-8 6. The Covenant Son of God: God faithfully kept His promise by entering the world as our second Adam, through the lineage of Abraham. As the Son of promise, Christ lived out the terms of the covenant, gave His life as the covenant sacrifice, rose from the dead victorious over sin and death, and ascended to the throne of the universe bearing within Himself the humanity He came to redeem. An actual member of the human race—the Son of God that Adam was meant to be—now occupies the throne of the universe awaiting our arrival, that we might rule with Him. God became a member of the human race in order to reincorporate humanity into the joy of covenantal existence. 2 Corinthians 1:20; Matthew 1:1; Luke 1:6779; John 17:24-26; Ephesians 2:4-7; 1 Corinthians 15 7. The Covenant Community: God has established in the world, through His faithful covenant Son, a covenant community known as the church. It is the mission of the church to proclaim God’s faithful love for the human race—which is the gospel—to break down all walls of relational hostility and demonstrate what covenant fellowship looks like in Christ. Isaiah 56; John 13:35; 1 John 1:1-5; Ephesians 2:14; Hebrews 2:10-18

COVENANT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING The concept of “covenant” constitutes a totalizing theological vision. Covenant explains everything. If you understand the idea of covenant, you understand the whole point of the Bible. Covenant defines God’s character. Covenant explains why God made the world. Covenant reveals how humans were meant to live in relation to one another. Covenant explains how God intends to restore humanity to right relationship with Himself and with one another. Since the Bible is a story, it follows that it is driven by a theme, a plot, a scheme of thought. Some great purpose is being worked out in the living pages of Scripture. That great purpose is the reestablishment of faithful love in all human relations. The main characters that drive the narrative are these: Adam and Eve: the original son and daughter of God, made in the image of God, charged with the task of procreating the image of God and stewarding the earth with covenant faithfulness. Abraham and Sarah: the chosen human vessels through whom a succession of sons would be born to the world until, finally, the promised one would arrive in the flesh to be the final, eschatological Son of God on behalf of the whole human race. Isaac: the covenant son of God through Abraham and Sarah. Jacob: the covenant son of God through Isaac and Rebekah. Israel: the corporate son of God among the nations.

David: the son of God in the office of the messianic (anointed) king. Jesus: the long-awaited Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of God, the promised one who would come to occupy the vacated position of Adam and reestablish the human race in the original position God made them to occupy. In Matthew’s version of the story, God became the Son of God “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). In Luke’s telling, God became the Son of God “to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to our father Abraham” (Luke 1:7273). In John’s version, God became the Son of God to reveal that God “so loved the world (with covenant faithfulness) that He gave His only begotten Son (just as promised), that whoever believes in Him (as the new Son of God in Adam’s stead) should not perish but have everlasting life (as faithful covenant sons and daughters of God)” (John 3:16). These are simply three ways of saying the same thing: God became the Son of God in order to keep covenant with the human race and bring us back into covenant relation with Himself and one another.

THE ETERNAL COVENANT Scripture repeatedly informs us that this thing called “covenant” is “eternal” in nature. The great purpose being worked out within the biblical narrative is “the eternal covenant” (Genesis 9:16; 17:7, 13, 19; 2 Samuel 23:5; Psalm 105:10; Isaiah 24:5; 61:8; Jeremiah 31:3; 32:40; Hebrews 13:20).1 Meaning what, exactly? In what sense is the covenant an “eternal” reality?

The covenant is eternal because covenant defines who God is, and God is eternal. The essence of the covenant is God’s love, which is the eternal reality of God’s very being (Isaiah 54:10; 55:3). To say that the covenant is eternal is simply to say that relational integrity, or faithful love, defines reality as God created reality to operate, and that this operating system is designed after the pattern of God’s own intrinsic identity. Apart from and before all creation, God is a relational unit of three persons eternally coexisting with love each one for the others. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant Character of God. Creation arises out of an agreement between the three members of the Heavenly Trio to make others in their collective image. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant of Creation. The plan of salvation, like creation, arises out of an agreement between the three members of the Heavenly Trio to remain faithful to humanity even in the face of humanity’s unfaithfulness to God, to seek reconciliation, and to do everything possible to restore the relationship. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant of Peace. Through Moses and the prophets—beginning with Genesis 3:15 and expanding from there into numerous songs and symbols, poems and prophecies—the entire corpus of the Hebrew Scriptures pointed forward to the arrival of the one who would keep the promise God made to the human race through Abraham. We can therefore speak of the whole Old Testament as The Covenant Promise. Having made the promise to redeem Adam’s failure through the offspring of the woman, God chose Abraham to initiate a lineage through which the promised child could eventually enter the world. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant People.

The New Testament opens with the genealogy of Jesus for a reason. “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers,” until we come to Joseph and Mary who begot “Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1). Literally, the whole point of the New Testament is to announce that Jesus is the long-awaited Son of God foretold by all the prophets. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant Son of God. According to the New Testament, the church established by Christ is the founding of a new humanity and a new Israel, to be composed of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people group, who are to be known by the world for their love. We can therefore speak of the church with theological accuracy as The Covenant Community.

AN EXERCISE IN MISSING THE POINT The difficulty the anti-trinitarian advocates are having is that they are not taking into account the story of the Bible. They see verses and then engage in a great deal of interpretive liberty to make their selected verses say things that the authors of Scripture know nothing about. They see trees, but they don’t see the forest in which the trees are situated. They don’t even seem to know that they are in a forest at all. They ask questions of Scripture that Scripture itself doesn’t ask or answer. They are curious about the metaphysical nature of God, whereas the biblical writers are concerned with the covenant character of God. They are Greek thinkers lost on the landscape of a Hebrew text. Anti-trinitarians believe Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ, a long time ago in eternity past, by some mysterious means, was birthed into existence by God the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is the emanating influence of the Father, rather than a person distinct from the Father. Therefore, the Father is the “One True God” and the Trinity is a heretical doctrine that amounts to idolatry. This is the big truth, the testing truth, the saving truth that people must know and accept in order to be right with God, in order to not be idolaters, in order to be saved at last. The big problem is, not a single book of the Bible, nor even a single chapter in any book of the Bible, displays any effort to explain this idea.

The best the anti-trinitarians can do is to isolate a few sentences and impose extra-biblical meaning on them in order to construct their position. All the while, the heartbreaking tragedy is that the big, beautiful story of God’s faithful love is completely blocked from their view as they obsess over Jesus being an anciently begotten God, subordinate to the One True God. It cannot be overstated that the entire anti-trinitarian doctrine is based on a single biblical expression: “only begotten Son” (John 1:18; 3:16, 18). There are other verses that are brought to bear upon the subject— Proverbs 8 is chief among them, which we will unpack in the next chapter—but if the term “only begotten Son” were not used in the New Testament, the anti-trinitarian view would not exist. In that one term, they imagine the Bible is trying to inform us about the ontology and chronology of Christ. The whole doctrine is built on the fact that Jesus is called the “only begotten Son” of the Father. And this means that the anti-trinitarian position is based on a very simple but disastrous oversight: the term, “only begotten son,” is derived directly from the Old Testament narrative, where we are explicitly told exactly what it means. Ignoring the Old Testament material, the antitrinitarian advocates simply isolate the term and tell us it means something that, in fact, it does not. Think this through: 1. The anti-trinitarian reads the term, “only begotten Son.” 2. The anti-trinitarian then simply tells us what the term means without so much as acknowledging the Old Testament source of the term. In fact, the anti-trinitarian proponents don’t even need the Old Testament for their position. 3. The anti-trinitarian then simply tells us what the term means without so much as acknowledging the Old Testament source of the term. In fact, the anti-trinitarian proponents don’t even need the Old Testament for their position.

4. And what does the anti-trinitarian tell us it means for Jesus to have been “begotten”? Well, that a really long time ago in the ancient eternal past, the One True God birthed another God into existence, and that’s how we got Jesus. This interpretation is simply manufactured, on the spot, requiring only that we have before us the words, “only begotten Son.” The entire sonship narrative given to us by Moses and the prophets is completely ignored in favor of this made-up Greek metaphysics interpretation about a greater God bringing a lesser God into existence. So, then, the anti-trinitarian position is based on a mistake so elementary that it blows one’s mind to realize that anyone who has actually read the whole Bible would fall for it. It is a wonder that the view has been able to cause endless debates for nearly two thousand years. It is a greater wonder that the view has produced entire denominations—Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarians—while being utterly dependent on simply not acknowledging the actual source of the sonship terminology in the very story that defines it. Yes, that was a long sentence and I would read it again if I were you. The New Testament does use the words Father, Son, and begotten. And, yes, the Bible formulates sentences with those words to call Jesus “the only begotten Son” of “the Father.” But here’s the thing: all of those New Testament words have their origin in the covenant story of the Old Testament. So we don’t need to guess what they mean. The story itself tells us what they mean. God created a man and called him Adam, and the New Testament identifies Adam as the original son of God. Adam sinned, thus forfeiting his sonship position. God promised that a child would be born to humanity and redeem the forfeited sonship position of Adam.

To accomplish the promise, God established a lineage through which the child would be born to the world. The promised Son would be faithful to the sonship identity that Adam failed to maintain. God entered into covenant relationship with Abraham, promising that Abraham and his wife, Sarah, would have a son, through whom the whole human race would be blessed and restored to covenantal relationship with God. Abraham had a son named Isaac, who was designated as the son of the covenant promise. Isaac had a son named Jacob, who was designated as the son of the covenant promise. Jacob had twelve sons who collectively grew into a corporate people and were taken into Egyptian bondage. Upon delivering them from bondage, God introduced Himself to Israel as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and explained to them that in their deliverance from bondage He was begetting them and becoming their Father as a newly birthed nation (Exodus 4:22-23; Deuteronomy 32:6). Israel, now designated as God’s only begotten son among the other nations, was to be educated under Moses and the prophets in the ways of covenantal love. In this way Israel was to become a light to the nations, demonstrating that the covenantal God of Israel is different in character than the demon-gods that rule the other nations. The witness of God’s only begotten son, Israel, would communicate to the other nations that God’s covenantal system generates flourishing relationships on all levels. In this way, the other nations would be attracted to God and be incorporated into Israel, restoring the sonship status of all human beings. But instead of modeling God’s covenant system to the other nations, Israel chose monarchy as a governing system in rebellion against God. Israel was warned by God’s prophet that having a king was not the way to go, foretelling the horrific results that would inevitably follow. But the people insisted upon monarchy as their chosen governing system, so God

accommodated their insistence. As a result, Israel invited the hostility of the other nations. Saul was Israel’s first king. He proved the corrupting influence of monarchical power, just as God had warned would be the case. Then David became king. Despite his own demonstration of the wrongfulness of monarchy as a governing system, he also demonstrated characteristics that rendered him God’s chosen one for the continuation of the covenant lineage. At this point, David, the anointed king of Israel, became the son of God in the messianic line. So, then, in the very context of this story, against the backdrop of God’s covenantal plan, Jesus was born to the world and bore the title, “the Son of God.” By conferring this title upon Him, the New Testament authors mean exactly what the foregoing narrative means: Jesus is the covenantal Son of God. Jesus is the Messianic Son of God in the Abrahamic, David lineage. Reaching all the way back to the beginning of the story, Jesus is the Adamic Son of God. This is the great narrative of the Bible and this is the meaning of the Sonship of Christ. The authors of Scripture—the prophets and the apostles—are all on the same page, reading from the same script that set the story in motion, and then working out the implication of that story to its glorious climax in Christ, the new Son of God in Adam’s stead.

“GOD IS LOVE” VS EVERYTHING ELSE In the big history of ideas, we basically have before us: God is love vs. Everything else

And I mean that, not as a trite oversimplification, but as a robust and clarifying statement of theological significance. The God of the biblical narrative is utterly, completely, extremely distinct from everything else available within the total realm of human thought. On the one hand, we have numerous versions of monistic determinism under three basic categories: • materialistic determinism • pantheistic determinism • and theistic determinism Everywhere we look on the field of ideas, we encounter determinism— the idea that human beings are the subjects of irresistible forces that determine all the events and outcomes that make up their lives. Those forces are thought to be either natural (occurring within a purely materialistic universe) or supernatural (imposed by an all-controlling God). The allure of determinism isn’t much of a mystery to penetrate. In both its philosophical and theological forms, determinism acts as a selfmedicating buffer against the onslaught of our guilt, our fear of moral responsibility, and our terror at the sheer gravity of being. The moment I can make myself believe that: • everything happens for a reason, • whatever will be, will be, • God is in control, • nothing happens other than what was meant to happen,

• I am released from any real need for moral introspection and accountability. That is, I am released from covenant relationship with others as my moral counterparts. By infinite contrast, we have before us, through Moses and the prophets, the most amazing revelation of God imaginable, which reaches its teleological end in the irresistibly beautiful Jesus Christ. The Hebrew vision of God and of reality is utterly unique. It is unique, both in the ancient historical setting in which it emerged, and also amid all the current religions and philosophies of the world, which almost invariably place humanity under the inertia of irresistible power, either natural or supernatural. Quite literally, no exaggeration, the Yahweh God of Scripture stands alone in history with no rival for sheer moral beauty. The Bible is not concerned with philosophical questions of metaphysics, but rather with moral questions of interpersonal love. The brilliant Hebrew scholar, Abraham Joshua Heschel, nicely summarizes the essential difference between Greek and Hebrew thought: To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be? Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity This is the intensely practical focus that naturally arises from the biblical narrative, as opposed to the intensely philosophical focus that arises from splicing words and verses in order to argue about things that are outside of our intellectual orbit. The Bible isn’t asking us to figure out what God is or how long any member of the Godhead has existed, but rather to discover who God is and what it looks like to live in right relation with God and one another. The story of Scripture is not asking us to engage in philosophical speculations regarding the nature of God, but rather to adore and reflect the character of God. And what is the character of God? Well, the story tells us, and it’s breathtaking. Once upon an eternity, all there was, was God (Genesis 1:1).

And all there was, was love, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Beautiful, interactive, playful, other-centered love (Psalm 27:4; Proverbs 8:30-31; John 17:24). Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness . . . So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). That’s the story of Scripture. It’s a covenantal story. Which is to say, it’s a story that tells us who God is and who we are in relation to God and one another.

1 It is beyond the scope of our present pursuit, but there is strong textual evidence to demonstrate that the term, “the eternal gospel,” as occurs in the first angel’s message of Revelation 14 is equivalent to the Old Testament term, “the eternal covenant.” If this is the case, the implication would be that God’s “covenant” with Israel and the “gospel” of Christ are synonymous, leading to the conclusion that the “gospel” is only preached accurately when understood as the outworking of Israel’s covenant history, which is nearly absent from the evangelical preaching of “the gospel.”

“God moves through Word and Wisdom to access the human thinking and choosing process. If you think thoughts and feel feelings—and you do–you are always in the process of hearing from God.”

CHAPTER SIX

THE COVENANT COMMUNICATOR

  Love is relational in nature and other-centered in orientation. It follows, then, that love is necessarily communicative. Love wants to know and be known. The constant impulse of love is to give itself to others and receive into itself from others. If “God is love” (1 John 4:16), then God is naturally actuated by His own self-generated desire to cross the massive ontological expanse between Himself as God and the creatures He has made. Because God is God and we are . . . well . . . how shall I say this . . . we are so utterly and completely and categorically outside of the ontological realm of God, God must necessarily descend to us in order to be known by us. The word that encapsulates this divine condescension phenomenon is mediation. In this chapter and the next we will explore the extremely crucial biblical concept of mediation, which goes a long way in making sense of the identity of Christ as both God and the Son of God.

In Scripture, the form this divine descent takes is sometimes called “Word” and other times “Wisdom.” By means of Word and Wisdom, God mediates the knowledge of Himself into our consciousness. The human being is a creature of cognition and volition. We think out the implications of reality in deductive, rational patterns, and we choose what we will do and be in response to our perceptions. By means of Word and Wisdom, the knowledge of the divine character is conveyed into human cognition, appealing to our volition for reciprocal response, like a constant inaudible whisper that says, “I want you. Do you want me, too? If yes, this is how you can proceed. If no, this is what the alternative looks like and where it leads.” God moves through Word and Wisdom to access the human thinking and choosing process. This is happening necessarily and continually by virtue of the fact that “God is love” and can never cease pursuing us. To be rational, free beings, such as we are, is to hear from God non-stop. If you think thoughts and feel feelings—and you do—you are always in the process of hearing from God, whether you are conscious of His overtures or not. In this chapter, we will explore two key Old Testament passages that together weave a tapestry of understanding regarding how the infinite God communicates with finite creatures through Word and Wisdom: Deuteronomy 30 and Proverbs 8.

THE WORD–DEUTERONOMY 30 Moses explained to Israel that “the word” was present to their hearts and speaking through their mouths: For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. Deuteronomy 30:11-14

Moses is telling the children of Israel something extremely important regarding the nature of truth and its intersection with human existence. According to Moses, there is a sense in which God is always speaking to every person within the realm of their own thought process and speaking patterns. God is communicating with each of us, before any human teacher comes along. Prophets, such as Moses, simply tell people the truth God has already been communicating to them. If they would just stop evading “the word” that is actively forming ideas inside of them as they live their daily lives, they might realize that they’ve been hearing God’s “voice” all along. If they would just pause to listen to the kinds of things that come out of their mouths, they would notice God speaking to them in all the pleas for fairness and justice they articulate when judging others. God is ever present to every human, always trying to get our attention and persuade us of His love. Essentially, Moses says to the children of Israel, This entire body of covenant knowledge I’ve been teaching you isn’t a mystery to you, and it’s not far away from you. In fact, if you would just pay attention to your internal conviction of right and wrong, you would realize that I’m simply explaining to you what you already know to be true, because. God has already been actively communicating to you by means of His word before I ever opened my mouth to teach you a thing. Then the apostle Paul comes along and quotes the Deuteronomy 30 passage, specifically identifying “the Word” as the one we come to know later in the biblical narrative as Jesus Christ: For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, “The man who does those things shall live by them.” But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, “‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The Word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the LORD Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:5-9

What’s happening here is that the abstract “word”—the phenomenon of conceptual truth occurring within the realm of human consciousness—is identified by Paul with an actual person. “The Word” Moses referenced in his discourse to Israel was none other than the pre-incarnate Christ. This means that Jesus was active in our world—indeed, in the human mind—before we encountered Him in the flesh on the stage of human history. John’s gospel opens with the incarnation of the Word Moses told Israel about: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it . . . . The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world . . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:1-5, 9, 14, ESV First, John invokes the creation account of Genesis: “In the beginning . . .” The reader expects the sentence to be completed as it occurs in Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But John doesn’t accommodate our expectation. Instead, he creatively plays with the language for a theological purpose: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John is telling a new story, but he wants us to know that it is grounded in the old story. He is telling us the story of redemption as a relaunch of creation. Then John informs us that this “Word” made every “thing . . . that was made.” With that rather precise language, John presents us with two fundamental categories of reality: the made and the unmade. And he wants us to know that the Word occupies the unmade category. The Word, John explains, is none other than the Maker of all made things.

Not only did the Word make all things, the Word has been giving “light to everyone” down through history, illuminating the dark chambers of the human mind with a sense of grace and truth, distinguishing in our minds between good and evil, so that the darkness has never been able to prevail over the light. Then comes John’s astounding punchline: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And with that, we just moved from the abstract idea of truth to a personal being who is the source of all truth. This person we have before us in the flesh, Jesus Christ, is none other than the Word, which, before He shows up on earth as a human being, created humanity and has been speaking to all human hearts down through history.

LADY WISDOM–PROVERBS 8 Proverbs 8 conveys the same idea as Deuteronomy 30. Moses explained to Israel that the truth he had been teaching them was no big mystery or distant theory for them, if they’d just pay attention to “the Word” that had already been communicated to their hearts and coming out of their mouths. Solomon’s magnificent poem portrays “Wisdom” as actively communicating within the minds and social affairs of humans. Proverbs 8 is also an extremely controversial passage. Verses 22-25 are a really big deal for the anti-trinitarian advocates. You’ll see why shortly. But it is crucial that we read the entire chapter in order to grasp what the author is trying to tell us. Yes, it is a long passage to quote in its entirety, but Proverbs 8 is one of the most enjoyable reads in all of literature, so please take in every line with eager attentiveness: Does not wisdom cry out, And understanding lift up her voice? She takes her stand on the top of the high hill, Beside the way, where the paths meet. She cries out by the gates, at the entry of the city, At the entrance of the doors:

To you, O men, I call, And my voice is to the sons of men. O you simple ones, understand prudence, And you fools, be of an understanding heart. Listen, for I will speak of excellent things, And from the opening of my lips will come right things; For my mouth will speak truth; Wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are with righteousness; Nothing crooked or perverse is in them. They are all plain to him who understands, And right to those who find knowledge. Receive my instruction, and not silver, And knowledge rather than choice gold; For wisdom is better than rubies, And all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, And find out knowledge and discretion. The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverse mouth I hate. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom; I am understanding, I have strength. By me kings reign,

And rulers decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, All the judges of the earth. I love those who love me, And those who seek me diligently will find me. Riches and honor are with me, Enduring riches and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, yes, than fine gold, And my revenue than choice silver. I traverse the way of righteousness, In the midst of the paths of justice, That I may cause those who love me to inherit wealth, That I may fill their treasuries. The LORD (Yahweh) possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, When there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills, I was brought forth; While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, Or the primal dust of the world.

When He prepared the heavens, I was there, When He drew a circle on the face of the deep, When He established the clouds above, When He strengthened the fountains of the deep, When He assigned to the sea its limit, So that the waters would not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; And I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him, Rejoicing in His inhabited world, And my delight was with the sons of men. Now therefore, listen to me, my children, For blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, And do not disdain it. Blessed is the man who listens to me, Watching daily at my gates, Waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoever finds me finds life, And obtains favor from the LORD; But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death. What an amazing piece of inspired poetic revelation!

Astoundingly, Wisdom takes her stand and speaks with a great deal of moral specificity. She cries out for “truth, “justice” and “righteousness.” She takes her stand against “evil, pride, and arrogance.” Wisdom does not merely deal in intellectual ideas or philosophical musings. Rather, Wisdom is interested in the way people treat one another. She communicates to human beings a sense of moral order and relational rectitude. According to the poem, Wisdom’s passion for right and her disdain of wrong is communicated by her within the realm of human conscience and within the dynamics of our social engagement. She is invisible and yet obvious to every person who is paying attention. She makes her inaudible voice heard “by the gates, at the entry of the city, at the entrance of the doors.” Her principles are evident to the “understanding heart.” When “rulers decree justice,” it is Wisdom who is prompting their good impulses and showing up in every good judicial system. As is the case with “the word” in Deuteronomy 30, Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is portrayed by Solomon as always crying out in human affairs, because Wisdom is built into the fabric of reality, the poem explains. Creation itself emerged from the Wisdom of God, so it is woven into the way everything operates. Human beings cannot go forward in any endeavor without being confronted by the whispers and shouts of Wisdom. In our internal sense of justice, in our collective social ordering toward truth and fairness, Wisdom is speaking to us all. But what, exactly, is Wisdom? Where does it come from? Is it merely abstract knowledge? Well, the passage seems to indicate that Wisdom is a who and not merely a what. Wisdom is depicted as a person, not merely as abstract intellectual activity: “She takes her stand . . .”

“She cries out . . .” This is called, “personification.” To say that Wisdom is “personified” is to say that the abstract reality of Wisdom is invested with personal attributes, similar to the way a man might personify his truck by saying, “She’s a reliable ol’ girl.” The man understands, of course, that his truck is not literally a person. But something more than mere personification is on display in Proverbs 8. Wisdom is said to be in fellowship with Yahweh (Verse 30). The two of them are described as engaged together in the joyous, playful, joint venture of creating the world (Verse 31). Wisdom isn’t just personified. Wisdom is a person, or a specific personal being. Noticing this characteristic in the passage, biblical scholars use the word hypostasis to explain what is happening in Proverbs 8. The word is composed of hupo, which means under, and stasis, which means substance. So hypostasis means, underlying substance or reality. Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon interprets the passage as describing, “the hypostatic Wisdom of God.” That is to say, there is an underlying substance or reality of personhood behind Wisdom. Taking into account Paul’s declaration that Jesus is “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24, 29), scholars generally identify the hypostatic Wisdom of Proverbs 8 as the person, Jesus Christ. But once we recognize that Wisdom is none other than Jesus, the antitrinitarians take some of the language in the passage as proof that Jesus was brought into existence by God the Father and, therefore, is a chronologically secondary and ontologically lesser deity in relation to the Father. Wisdom says, “I have been established from everlasting” and “I was brought forth” (verses 23, 25). And with that, we are called upon by the anti-trinitarians to imagine the actualization of a previously nonexisting God. The line of reasoning goes like this:

In Proverbs 8, “Wisdom” is depicted as a personal being. Paul says that Jesus is “wisdom from God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). So, then, the “Wisdom” of Proverbs 8 is Jesus. And Wisdom says, “I was set up” and “brought forth.” There you have it, solid evidence that Christ did not exist until God the Father brought Jesus forth into existence. Actually, no. Not only does this not constitute solid evidence that Jesus is a caused divine being, it’s not even weak evidence. The colossal conclusion at the end of the line of reasoning requires that we read a few words in isolation from their context and then arbitrarily assign meaning to those words that does not exist in the passage itself. In other words, the argument is completely dependent on an assumption, and the assumption is that the words “established” and “brought forth” refer to Wisdom being “brought forth” from nonexistence into existence. But the passage taken for what it actually says in its own context is not trying to explain to us how or when Wisdom, Jesus, began to exist. Rather, the passage describes Wisdom being “established” and “brought forth” to perform the task of creating human beings and then to perform the ongoing task of communicating with human beings once they do exist. Proverbs 8 is a poetic portrayal of the mediation arrangement that exists between God and humans. The point is both simple and profound: the moment created beings came into existence, God began communicating with them by means of Wisdom. And one of the members of the Godhead, the one known as Christ later in redemption history, performs this work on behalf of the Heavenly Trio. Additionally, the Hebrew word here translated “established,” or “set up” in the King James Version, is nacak. It literally means, “to pour out,” in

the sense of pouring out an offering or pouring out anointing oil on a person to set them apart for a purpose. It is a covenantal word that indicates dedication to a job, a task, a role. Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon thus interprets the word as, “to make a covenant.” Nacak is used in the second Psalm to describe the anointing of the king: Yet I have set (nacak) My King On My holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: The LORD has said to Me, “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Psalm 2:6-7 In the first instance, this passage applies to the anointing (setting up, establishing) of David as the king of Israel. But it is far more than that. This is a prophecy of the coming Messiah-King of Israel and the world, Jesus Christ. The book of Acts and the book of Hebrews both quote Psalm 2 as applying to Jesus (Acts 4:24-25; 13:33; Hebrews 1:5; 5:5). This is crucial to an understanding of the sonship identity of Christ. How so? Well, notice in Psalm 2 that the covenant king, David, is called God’s begotten son, and notice that he is begotten into that sonship position on the day of his anointing as king. The exclusive nature of the position is evident, as there can only be one king. Because the position is occupied by David alone, he is God’s only begotten son. The obvious point is this: to be “set” apart as the king by covenant anointing (nacak) is exactly the same thing as being “begotten” as God’s “son” to the position of king. The term, only begotten son, indicates covenant appointment, not literal birth. Building on the entire Old Testament narrative of the firstborn son being the exclusive (only) carrier of the covenant promise, Psalm 2 is the source of the New Testament language that identifies Jesus as God’s “only begotten son.” To acknowledge this fact, is to take down the entire

anti-trinitarian edifice. Clearly, when the New Testament writers identify Jesus as God’s only begotten Son, they are identifying Him as the covenantal Son of God in the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, and King David. They are not, therefore, calling Him God’s only begotten Son in order to inform us of His ancient ontological origins. And this brings us back to Proverbs 8, in which the same covenant word, nacak, is employed to describe “Wisdom”—whom we now know to be the pre-incarnate Christ—being “established” or “set up.” As in Psalm 2, Wisdom is “set up” in a position, to perform the work of creating and communicating with humanity. A person does not begin to exist when they are appointed to the performance of a task. In fact, appointing them to the task presupposes that they already exist. Wisdom, the preincarnate Christ, already existed for all eternity past as a member of the Heavenly Trio. Then, at the appointed time, He stepped into the dual role of Creator and Mediator. Employing the very language of Proverbs 8, Ellen White explicitly interprets the language as applying to Christ’s mediatorial role, as opposed to a description of His coming into existence: The plan of salvation was designed to redeem the fallen race, to give them another trial. Christ was appointed to the office of Mediator from the creation of God, set up from everlasting to be our substitute and surety. Before the world was made, it was arranged that the divinity of Christ should be enshrouded in humanity. “A body,” said Christ, “hast thou prepared me.” But He did not come in human form until the fulness of time had expired. Then He came to our world, a babe in Bethlehem. Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, April 5, 1906 Christ is the Covenant Communicator. He is the wooing call of God’s word, ever speaking to all human hearts with the persistence of a longing lover. He is the moral logic of divine wisdom, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting, within the realm of human conscience.

He is, and always has been, the Mediator of the Eternal Covenant. That’s where we go now. I’ll be waiting for you in the next chapter.

“As soon as creation was embarked upon, all of God’s governmental systems, social ordering, relational posturing, and plans, were set in motion for the purpose of communicating with His creation.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

MEDIATOR OF THE ETERNAL COVENANT

  The relational goals of covenantal love necessitate that God, who is utterly transcendent to all of creation, become immanent to creation in order that we might come to know Him. With wonder, then, we can think of God as always in the process of coming down to us by ways and means that are innate to His love. God operates, we might say, at the apex of emotional intelligence. In the previous chapter, we explored how mediation occurs within the realm of the human thinking-feeling process. The inaudible voice of Lady Wisdom is constantly conversing with each of us, and each of us is constantly in the process of agreeing with or silencing her voice. The Word of moral logic is always communicating to us within the realm of conscience, and we are always saying yes or no to that Word. In this chapter, we will discover that God, the great communicator, has also shown up visibly in human history at strategic points along the way in His quest for covenantal development. These theophanies, too, are forms of mediation between infinite God and finite humanity.

UNAPPROACHABLE LIGHT Paul explains that God dwells “in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). John says, simply, “God is light” (1 John 1:5). In Hebrews 12:29 we are told, “Our God is a consuming fire.” To Moses God said, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live” (Exodus 33:20). Whatever else all of this means, at a bare minimum it means that God, in all God’s transcendent glory, constitutes a brilliant reality that we mere mortals cannot encounter without lethal effect. We need a wire of some kind, a conduit through which the massive energy of God can flow to us in bearable form. We need a dimming medium between us and God. We need a mediator.

TWO YAHWEHS Throughout the Old Testament, human beings encountered God and did not die. This means, of course, that they did not encounter God as God is in all God’s unapproachable glory, but rather they encountered God in a mediated form. Observing this part of the biblical story, Hebrew scholars have long acknowledged that there are two Yahweh figures brought to view in the Old Testament—one invisible and kept at a safe distance in heaven and the other quite visible and interactive on earth. A rabbinical scholar by the name of Alan Segal published a book in 1977 with the telling title, Two Powers in Heaven. According to Segal, at least two hundred years before Christ, the Jewish people held that there are two Yahwehs on display in the Torah: • invisible Yahweh in heaven • and visible Yahweh interacting with humans on earth

This was obvious to Hebrew scholars because it is obvious in the text of Scripture, as we will see. But Segal explains that sometime within the second century after Christ, the two Yahwehs doctrine began to be regarded with disfavor. This shift in perspective was likely due to a combination of two factors: the influence of Greek monism on Judaism and the growth of Christianity with its claim that Christ was divine, suggesting that He could have been the second Yahweh figure of the Torah who had been interacting all along with Israel throughout their history. The book of Genesis tells the story of Creation, the Fall, and the interactions of God with the generations that followed, straight up through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons, whose descendants would compose the nation of Israel. As Moses tells the story, Yahweh shows up visibly on earth at various points along the way to communicate with the key people who drive the covenant narrative. First, Yahweh is visibly present throughout the account of Creation and the Fall of Adam and Eve. Yahweh is depicted as “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8), as if it were a normal occurrence. On this occasion, Adam and Eve hid themselves from Yahweh because they had sinned. “Then the LORD (Yahweh) God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” (verse 9). Adam is clearly having a visible and audible encounter with God. As Genesis unfolds, Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, also has personal interaction with Yahweh, until “Cain went out from the presence of the LORD” (Genesis 4:16, italics added). Noah is also depicted as having direct interactions with Yahweh (Genesis 7-9). But recall what Paul tells us: God “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.” We must conclude, then, that the seeable, hearable Yahweh of Genesis is God coming to humans in a mediated form that they can bear. When we come to chapters 11 and 12, the story of Abraham begins to unfold. “Now the LORD (Yahweh) had said to Abram . . .” (Genesis 12:1). Here begins the long narrative of Abraham’s interactions with Yahweh, in which Abraham repeatedly hears the audible voice of Yahweh and has direct, visible encounters with Him:

Then the LORD (Yahweh) appeared to him (Abraham) by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground, and said, “My LORD (Adonai), if I have now found favor in Your sight, do not pass on by Your servant. Please let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. And I will bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh your hearts. After that you may pass by, inasmuch as you have come to your servant.” Genesis 18:1-5 Three men show up unannounced at Abraham’s tent, and the passage explicitly tells us that one of them is none other than Yahweh. “Yahweh appeared to him.” Clearly, it is a visible encounter. Abraham bows to the ground and addresses one of the visitors as “Adonai,” a reverential name for Yahweh used by the Hebrew people. Abraham then brings water and washes Yahweh’s feet. Food is served and eaten. Fellowship is had. The time then comes for the visitors to go. Abraham walks with the three individuals as they depart his camp: Then the men rose from there and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them to send them on the way. And the LORD (Yahweh) said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?” Genesis 18:16-17 As they walk together, Yahweh decides He will not conceal His intentions from Abraham. A conversation ensues between them: And the LORD (Yahweh) said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I (Yahweh) will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me (Yahweh); and if not, I (Yahweh) will know.” Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the LORD (Yahweh). And Abraham came near and said, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” Genesis 18:20-23

After Abraham moves through a negotiation process with Yahweh, they part company: So the LORD (Yahweh) went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham. Genesis 18:33 Clearly, Abraham has been engaged in direct contact with Yahweh in a visible form. As the story progresses, two of the three men, who are angels, arrive in Sodom and explain to Lot what is about to go down: For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD (Yahweh), and the LORD (Yahweh) has sent us to destroy it. Genesis 19:13 Then, when the account of the destruction of Sodom is given, we have this fascinating explanation of how it happened: Then the LORD (Yahweh) rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD (Yahweh) out of the heavens . . . And it came to pass, when God (Elohim) destroyed the cities of the plain, that God (Elohim) remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt. Genesis 19:24, 29 Here we see two beings, both bearing the name Yahweh—one on earth and the other in heaven—working together to perform a single act. The Yahweh figure on earth, who has been conversing with Abraham, rains fire on the cities “from Yahweh out of the heavens.” Then the narrator says, God (Elohim, the plural, collective name for God) destroyed the cities. The two Yahwehs phenomenon is significant because it demonstrates that the knowledge of the plurality of God is embedded within the Old Testament and is not a New Testament innovation. Long before Christ was declared to be God in the flesh in relation to God in heaven, the Hebrew people understood that God existed simultaneously as two beings: the invisible heavenly Yahweh and the visible earthly Yahweh.

In fact, the Old Testament closes with a prophecy that mentions the two Yahweh figures and points to the coming Messiah as one of them: “Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me. And the LORD (Yahweh), whom you seek, Will suddenly come to His temple, Even the Messenger of the Covenant, In whom you delight. Behold, He is coming,” Says the LORD (Yahweh) of hosts. Malachi 3:1 This prophecy foretells the arrival of the person we encounter in the New Testament, born of Mary in Bethlehem, who bears the name, Jesus Christ. And what does the prophecy say? “The LORD (Yahweh), whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant.” Who is this Jesus? He is Yahweh in the flesh, that’s who. And what is His work? To communicate the covenant. And who is telling us that Yahweh is coming to our world? Yahweh, is telling us. One Yahweh is promising that another Yahweh will be coming to the world as “the Messenger of the Covenant.” The Yahweh doing the speaking in the passage is sending forth another Yahweh distinct from Himself. The Godhead was stirred with pity for the race, and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit gave themselves to the working out of the plan of redemption. In order to fully carry out this plan, it was decided that Christ, the only begotten Son of God, should give Himself an offering for sin. What line can measure the depth of this love? Ellen White, The Australasian Union Conference Record, April 1, 1901 Within the intimate inner circle of the Heavenly Trio, it was decided that one of them would be the Mediator to humanity on behalf of the three. Jesus, before He was Jesus, was that Mediator. He has always been the channel of visible and audible communication between God and all created beings. He is that member of the Godhead who, from the

moment created beings began to exist, was the designated ontological bridge between infinite God and finite creatures. Because God is God— utterly, completely, transcendently, infinitely other than what we are as created beings—there needed to be some kind of relational overpass by which the massive chasm could be crossed. Jesus is that overpass. The point is simple and yet significant: even within the monotheism of ancient Hebraism, it was understood that there is an innate plurality to Yahweh’s mono identity. There is One God, but that One divine essence is composed of at least two personal beings, or two Yahwehs. This was not understood to be polytheism, because each of the two are equally Yahweh—two personal beings of one divine substance. This is explicit within the Hebrew narrative. And this brings us to the most important confession of faith in the Hebrew Scriptures.

THE SHEMA Moses gave to Israel a confession of faith that encapsulates the eternal identity of God. It became known as The Shema, named such for the first word of the confession, translated into English as “Hear.” Hear, O Israel: The LORD (Yahweh) our God (Elohim), the LORD (Yahweh) is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 First, we see that The Shema combines the singular name, Yahweh, with the plural name, Elohim. The crucial juxtaposition of the singular and the plural conveys the idea that God is one and yet more than one. Secondly, The Shema declares that Yahweh Elohim is something in particular: “one.” The question is, in what sense is God “one”? The word here is echad, which entails the idea of compound unity. For example, the word is used of the union of the man and the woman in marriage: “they shall become one (echad) flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The specific Hebrew word for a simple singularity, or a solitary one, is yachid. In

formulating The Shema, Moses could have used yachid, but he did not. He used the word echad in order to convey the idea that God is a relational unity, not a solitary singularity. The Shema literally reads like this: Yahweh (singular identity) our Elohim (plural identity) is one (seamless union). Thirdly, it is on the premise that Yahweh Elohim is one that Israel is commanded to love. That is to say, The Shema commands human beings to love God precisely because God is love. God lives out His divine existence in other-centered relational dynamics, so we who are made in God’s image are to live our lives in other-centered relational dynamics. The command would make no sense and have no rational justification if God were an absolute singularity. In that case, the command would have to be something like this: “God is a self-referring being, but you should live with reference to others.” The whole point of The Shema is exactly the opposite train of thought: “God is love, so you should live in love.” Polytheism is the idea that there are multiple rival gods. Monotheism is the idea that there is one God. Trinitarianism is the idea that there are three coeternal persons that compose one God. As such, trinitarianism is really the only coherent monotheism. But because trinitarianism says there are three divine persons, it presents a logical problem: Is the doctrine of the Trinity actually polytheism? How can the Trinity rightfully be called monotheism? If there are three persons, and each one of the three is God, does that not mean there are three Gods, not one?

No, actually! The Shema resolves the problem by suggesting that God is more than one and yet one. The answer to the problem lies in the biblical claim, utterly unique among all the belief systems of the world, that “God is love.” Consisting of three persons, God is one God precisely because love is the reality that defines who and what God is. God does not merely love, God is love. It is other-centeredness itself, which eternally occurs between the three persons of the relational unit, that constitutes God. What God is, is reciprocal love. God’s very being is constituted in the movement of the three persons in constant free relational motion toward one another. God is not, therefore, three Gods. God is three persons who are dynamically constituted as one God by virtue of the love that unifies them as one divine essence. There is one God, and only one God, forever existing in the self-giving love that defines them as one reality. God is God only as a communion of persons. And as a communion of persons, God is one God. And so it is that trinitarianism is monotheism. A choice must be made: • either monotheism means that God is one in the sense of an absolute singularity • or monotheism means God is one in the sense of a relational unity In the first case, love is inconceivable as the essence of God’s identity. We can try to imagine God as an absolute singularity and simultaneously as a personal being defined by love, but the idea immediately breaks down. Personhood is self-awareness in relation to others. If God is to be thought of as being a person at all, God must be thought of as existing in relationship. The notion of an ontologically solitary personal being is nonsensical. In so far as we hold that God is a personal being as opposed to an impersonal force, we are logically bound to the necessity of believing that God is a relational union of more than one person. A oneself monotheism is a logically incoherent idea. Third-person

consciousness is the only consciousness there is, and third person love is the only love there is. Either God existed in eternity past as a relational dynamic of persons, plural, or God is no person at all, but rather some kind of impersonal power, which equates to pantheism.

THE ETERNAL SONSHIP OF CHRIST Ellen White understood that the person known to us in history as Jesus Christ was none other than God in the flesh. She also understood that He was that specific member of the Heavenly Trio who was appointed, from all eternity past, to the task of being the mediator between God and created beings. She did not believe that Jesus Christ was a lesser God brought into existence by a greater God. The following statements are extremely helpful in clarifying her thinking and highlighting the crucial reality of mediation between God and humanity. The salvation of the human race has ever been the object of the councils of heaven. The covenant of mercy was made before the foundation of the world. It has existed from all eternity, and is called the everlasting covenant. So surely as there never was a time when God was not, so surely there never was a moment when it was not the delight of the eternal mind to manifest His grace to humanity. Signs of the Times, June 12, 1901 The terms of this oneness between God and man in the great covenant of redemption were arranged with Christ from all eternity. The covenant of grace was revealed to the patriarchs. The covenant made with Abraham four hundred and thirty years before the law was spoken on Sinai was a covenant confirmed by God in Christ, the very same gospel which is preached to us. “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.” The covenant of grace is not a new truth, for it existed in the mind of God from all eternity. This is why it is called the everlasting covenant. Signs of the Times, August 24, 1891

Notice that the covenant of redemption has “terms” and that these terms were “arranged with Christ from all eternity.” The plan of salvation is called “the everlasting covenant” because it existed in the mind of God for all eternity past. It is eternal in that it was always known to the omniscient mind of God. Therefore, arrangements were made to do it, but not in the sense that it was always an enacted reality. It was not, in fact, enacted until creation became a fact and redemption became a need. Prior to the actual enacting of the plan, the person who comes to be known to history as Christ, was, simply, one of the members of the Heavenly Trio. But while God’s Word speaks of the humanity of Christ when upon this earth, it also speaks decidedly regarding His pre-existence. The Word existed as a divine being, even as the eternal Son of God, in union and oneness with his Father. From everlasting He was the Mediator of the covenant, the one in whom all nations of the earth, both Jews and Gentiles, if they accepted him, were to be blessed. “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Before men or angels were created, the Word was with God, and was God. Review and Herald, April 5, 1906 Here, Ellen White spells out how Christ could be both God and the Son of God in eternity past. Prior to His incarnation, He “existed as a divine being.” That’s who and what He always was, innately, in Himself—none other than God. But in addition to existing as a fully divine being, He “even” existed “as the eternal Son of God.” But in what sense was He “the eternal Son of God”? In the sense that “from everlasting He was the Mediator of the covenant.” The Sonship position and the Mediator position are one and the same. She explains further: The plan of salvation was designed to redeem the fallen race, to give them another trial. Christ was appointed to the office of Mediator from the creation of God, set up from everlasting to be our substitute and surety. Before the world was made, it was arranged that the divinity of Christ should be enshrouded in humanity. “A body,” said Christ, “hast thou prepared me.” But He did not come in human form until the fulness of time had expired. Then He came to our world, a babe in Bethlehem. Review and Herald, April 5, 1906

Note the insightful articulation: “Christ was appointed to the office of Mediator . . . set up from everlasting . . . But he did not come in human form until” the time appointed. The point is a simple one: as soon as creation was embarked upon, all of God’s governmental systems, social ordering, relational posturing, and plans, were set in motion for the purpose of communicating with His creation. From eternity past, Christ was “set up” in “the office of Mediator.” He was put into a role, a position, an office. That is to say, it was not His native state of being apart from and before creation. He was “set up” in that position for purposes entailed within the creation-salvation enterprise. Jesus Christ, before He was born on earth as Jesus Christ, was the one appointed to the task of mediating all communication between God and humans, and the one who would execute all redemptive deeds on behalf of the Heavenly Trio. And yet, He did not inhabit the role of God’s Son in the flesh until the moment of His incarnation. Prior to His birth via the womb of Mary, for all eternity past, He was already-butnot-yet the “Son of God.” He was already the Son of God in that He had been appointed to that office from eternity past, and He was not yet the Son of God in the fullest sense until He actually became an incarnate member of the human race. In His humanity He was a partaker of the divine nature. In His incarnation He gained in a new sense the title of the Son of God. Said the angel to Mary, “The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” While the Son of a human being, He became the Son of God in a new sense. Thus He stood in our world—the Son of God, yet allied by birth to the human race. Signs of the Times, August 2, 1905 So, was Jesus the Son of God prior to His incarnation? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that He was appointed to the office of Mediator from the moment the knowledge of God needed to be conveyed to created beings.

No, in the sense that, apart from creation, before there was any need for mediation, all He was, was God. Said another way: as soon as God created rational beings with whom communication must occur, one member of the Godhead had to be designated as the Mediator. That member of the Heavenly Trio who became known to history as Christ, was the one appointed to that office. The anti-trinitarians use the above statement by Ellen White to insist that Christ, prior to the creation of humans and angels, had been brought into existence—created or begotten or caused—by the Father, whom they deem to be the one and only uncreated, unbegotten, uncaused God. There are numerous problems with this line of reasoning, not the least of which is the glaring idea that deity, in the anti-trinitarian scheme of thought, is an ontological category of being that can be actualized within beings that are not divine by nature. The idea is that the one and only true God underwent what Uriah Smith described as an evolutionary process that reached its completion with the creation or begetting of Christ as a secondary, lower-level God. And with that, the anti-trinitarian position is, at its core, pantheism, because it opens the door for any created being, human or angel, to imagine that divinity is an attainable state for themselves. But the fact is, no matter how you slice and dice the idea, the notion of “created deity” or “begotten deity” is a contradiction of terms. To be God is to never have been created, and to have been created is to not be God. But we do not need to take the above statement by Ellen White to mean that the ultimate and innate identity of Christ is one in which He is a created or begotten deity. She is simply employing the language of mediation within the creation-salvation enterprise. Yes, there is a sense in which Jesus was the Son of God before His incarnation, and yes there is “a new sense” in which He became the Son of God at the point of His incarnation. Prior to His incarnation, He was that member of the Godhead that occupied the position of Mediator to all of creation. At the point of His incarnation, He became the Son of God in the “new sense” that He was now an actual member of the human race, occupying the position vacated by Adam.

The one of the three we know as Jesus Christ was always, before His incarnation, operating in the role of Mediator. “From everlasting He was the Mediator of the covenant” (Ellen White, Review and Herald, April 5, 1906). God, as God, completely transcends all creation and progenerative categories—father, mother, birth, child, son, daughter, offspring, angel. Therefore, in order to be known by created beings, God, necessarily, at the moment of creation, took on the form of those He had made. By insisting that Sonship is innate to the divine identity of Christ rather than part of His role as Mediator, the anti-trinitarians end up with a massive theological problem—namely, that divinity is a quality of being that can be created. Yes, there are statements in the writings of Ellen White that speak of Christ as the Son of God before His incarnation. Failing to understand the nature of mediation, the anti-trinitarian advocates interpret these statements to mean that Christ must have been brought into existence by God sometime in eternity past. He was not. And it is imperative that we understand that He was not. Why? Well, because, if the pro-generative category of “Son” is, in fact, descriptive of Christ’s ultimate, intrinsic, ontological, metaphysical identity, apart from and prior to the creation-redemption enterprise, then the anti-trinitarian position is correct in asserting that Christ is not God in the highest sense. And if He is God, but not God in the highest sense, then it is possible for a caused being to be God in a lower sense. And if that’s true, deity is a state of being ontologically accessible to us all. Mediation is the biblical truth that answers the mystery of the eternal Sonship of Christ. As we developed in The Sonship of Christ, God, as God, necessarily transcends all material, pro-generative categories. To say that Jesus is God and then turn around and claim that He was generated into existence in some manner, is theologically incoherent. To be God, by definition, is to transcend all ontological categories that entail

causation. If Jesus is truly and fully divine, then we must hold that He is eternally self-existing. This is what Ellen White was trying to clarify when she said, employing the most unequivocal language she could muster, that “In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived” (The Desire of Ages, p. 530). And this brings us to the place where we can ponder the implications of the anti-trinitarian picture of God with reference to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary.

“The pagan idea of sacrifice is essentially transactional, whereas the Hebrew idea is covenantal. The difference between these two concepts is crucial, in that the first blocks our perception of God’s love and the second magnifies God’s love.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

A NECESSARY EQUALITY

  God is love. Love is other-centered and self-giving. The self-giving impulse that defines God, reasoned out to its logical extremity, would necessarily entail God giving the totality of Himself for others if circumstances should so demand. For love to be what love is, and for God to be who God is, there could be no limit to the lengths God would go in the giving of Himself to save us. The cross, therefore, was always potentiated in God’s future, in principle. Calvary was there, from all eternity past, enfolded in the heart of God, as the kind of supreme self-sacrificing act that would be necessary for the outworking of love if sin should enter the universe. But none of this is conceivable within a monistic doctrine of God. If God is a solitary self, love is not foundational to God’s identity. And if love is not foundational to God’s identity, self-sacrifice in the face of evil

is inconceivable for God. The cross of Calvary, as the ultimate act of divine self-sacrifice, cannot be logically deduced from the premise that God is an absolute singularity. But, oh the beautiful realizations that await those who begin with the premise that God is an eternal fellowship of divine persons, plural, who are perfectly one in self-giving love! The foundational concern of the Advent pioneers was that we maintain an understanding of the relational nature of God. They rejected trinitarian modalism for a vitally good reason, which they stated explicitly. Viewing God as one being projecting three persons would have the net theological effect of negating the divine personhood of Christ distinct from that of the Father. The relationship between the Father and the Son recorded in the New Testament would thus be rendered a mere charade possessing no actual substance. The pioneers discerned this and rightly pushed back on trinitarian modalism. Taking the concern of the pioneers seriously, Ellen White realized that the overall effect of shrinking God down to an absolute singularity ends up turning God into what she called a “nothingness” or a “non-entity.” Doing so, she discerned, serves as a gateway to pantheism. She worked out the implications of divine personhood as necessarily interpersonal. If God is a personal being at all, then God is a plurality of personhood. She achieved this perspective by insisting that, “In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived” and that the Holy Spirit is “the third person of the Godhead.” So crucial to a sound theological construct was this idea for Ellen White, that she would go so far as to list “the personality of God” as one of “the pillars of our faith,” one of “the old landmarks” of the Advent movement (Manuscript Release, No. 760, p. 9). She is not here using the word “personality” in the way we use it today to refer to the charisma or flatness of an individual’s social traits. She is using the word to mean personhood. She is insisting that each member of the Godhead is a person distinct from the others and together compose one God. Referencing the prayer of Christ in John 17, she said, “In these words the

personality of God and of His Son is clearly spoken of. The personality of the one does not do away with the necessity for the personality of the other” (Letter 232, 1903). This brings us to perhaps the most egregious theological transgression of anti-trinitarianism, and it is this: by reducing God to a solitary self, the anti-trinitarian doctrine reduces the sacrifice of Christ on the cross to the ultimate act of divine self-centeredness, essentially rendering Calvary a cosmic-level pagan sacrifice. Before we develop the point with detail, it will be immensely helpful to identify the core issue at stake in the cosmic conflict between good and evil.

SATAN IS A THEOLOGIAN Ellen White distilled the war between good and evil to one vital question: Is God essentially self-centered or other-centered? Unselfishness, the principle of God’s kingdom, is the principle that Satan hates; its very existence he denies. From the beginning of the great controversy he has endeavored to prove God’s principles of action to be selfish, and he deals in the same way with all who serve God. To disprove Satan’s claim is the work of Christ and of all who bear His name. Education, p. 154 Apparently, the devil is a theologian. He is in the business of formulating doctrines that have the net effect of denying that “God is love.” There is really just one thing the archenemy is after: to expunge love from the universe by denying its existence in God. So, then, wherever we encounter lines of theological or philosophical reasoning that make God out to be anything less than pure, self-giving love, the devil’s endgame is served.

Paul, too, informs us that Satan operates in the arena of ideas, and that the war between good and evil is a theological war at its foundation: The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Corinthians 4:4, NIV The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, NIV Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. 2 Corinthians 11:14-15, NIV Satan’s agenda is to blind people’s minds to the gospel, which Paul defines here as the good news of God’s true image, or character, as revealed in Christ. The implication is that Satan specializes in manufacturing lies regarding the character of God. So, then, Paul explains that we wage our war against Satan by demolishing “arguments,” or lines of reasoning, that run contrary to an accurate “knowledge” of who and what manner of person God is. When Paul says that Satan “masquerades as an angel of light,” he means that Satan presents himself as a messenger of truth. Satan operates within the realm of theological and philosophical systems. He is channeled through the sermons and writings of professed ministers of truth whose overall effect is to diminish the knowledge of God’s love. Even a casual survey of the history of ideas reveals that monism, in its various forms, is likely the most prominent and effective concept ever fabricated for denying love as the essence of God’s identity: • Plato’s Absolute One • Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover

• Arianism’s Solitary God • Modalism’s One God in Three Forms • Pantheism’s All-is-One-and-All-is-God In each case, God is reduced to an absolute singularity and a depersonalized force, absent of relational dynamics, empty of interpersonal exchange, void of love. Anti-trinitarianism is simply a subtle form of monism. As such, it poses significant problems for our understanding of the cross of Christ.

A DISASTROUS THEOLOGICAL OUTCOME The New Testament is repetitious and unequivocal in its declarations regarding the identity of Christ. According to Matthew’s gospel, the babe born in Bethlehem was none other than, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Paul states explicitly that “God was manifested in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16) and that the crucified one was none other than “the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Ellen White emphasizes the fact that the sacrifice we see taking place at Calvary was the sacrifice of none other than God: He who had subjected Himself to humanity was the Majesty of heaven, the Creator of every good and perfect gift. In giving Himself to redeem our world, Christ gave Himself a living sacrifice. He emptied Himself of His high prerogatives, left His mansions of glory, His throne and high command, and became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich. Signs of the Times, April 22, 1897 According to the anti-trinitarian view, the one who died on the cross was a chronologically secondary and ontologically lesser divine being occupying a subordinate position under the “one true God.” Depending on which version of anti-trinitarianism we consider, Christ was either a created deity, a begotten deity, or an eternally generated deity. But whatever word is employed to describe how He came into existence, the point is that He came into existence. He is not, therefore, God in the same sense as the Father. There was a point at which He began to exist,

before which He did not exist. J.M. Stephenson, an early Advent pioneer, expressed the idea bluntly: The idea of the Father and Son supposes priority of the existence of the one, and the subsequent existence of the other. To say that the Son is as old as the Father, is a palpable contradiction of terms. It is a natural impossibility for the Father to be as young as the Son, or the Son to be as old as the Father. . . . The idea of an eternal Son is a self-contradiction. He must, therefore have an origin. But what saith the Scriptures? They speak right to the point. The apostle Paul says, speaking of Christ, “Who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature.” Colossians 1:15. . . . To be such, it must refer to his Divine nature. . . . Creature signifies creation; hence to be the first born of every creature (creation), he must be a created being; and as such, his life and immortality must depend upon the Father’s will, just as much as angels, or redeemed men. J.M. Stephenson, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, November 14, 1854 Stephenson is simply being true to a false premise and grabbing a Bible verse out of context for its support. Clearly overlooking the larger covenantal sonship narrative of Scripture, Stephenson isolates the words “Father” and “Son” and simply assumes that the Bible uses this language in an effort to inform us regarding the ancient origins of Christ as a created being. He thinks God is a “natural” Father and Christ is a “natural” Son, logically demanding that the Son be younger than the Father, since that’s how it works with human fathers and sons. As a result, we end up with an older God creating a younger God. And that theological premise, in turn, produces a glaring distortion of God’s character when we come to the atoning death of Christ. The result is the most disastrous theological outcome imaginable: the sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary was the sacrifice of a created being to God for human salvation, rather than the sacrifice of God for our salvation. If the person dying on the cross is less than the one and only true God in the least particular, we have a huge theological problem. How huge?

Well, it would equate to a complete erasing of the distinction between the Christian gospel and all the pagan religions of history. That’s how huge! We would essentially be saying that the difference between the sacrifice of Christ and all the pagan sacrifices of history is merely a difference in magnitude, but not in kind. Following the logic of anti-trinitarianism from its fatal false premise, we end up with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross being the ultimate appeasement sacrifice of history, completely eclipsing the self-sacrificing love of God. When contemplating the substitutionary death of Christ, everything depends on the identity of the substitute. Our theology—our picture of God—vitally hinges on whether the one hanging on the cross is God in the highest sense, or not. John Stott gets to the heart of the issue with laser clarity: The first proposal is that the substitute was the man Christ Jesus, viewed as a human being, and conceived as an individual separate from both God and us, an independent third-party. Those who begin with this a priori lay themselves open to gravely distorted understandings of the atonement and so bring the truth of substitution into disrepute. They tend to present the cross in one or other of two ways, according to whether the initiative was Christ’s or God’s. In the one case Christ is pictured as intervening in order to pacify an angry God and wrest from him a grudging salvation. In the other, the intervention is ascribed to God, who proceeds to punish the innocent Jesus in place of us the guilty sinners who had deserved the punishment. In both cases God and Christ are sundered from one another: either Christ persuades God or God punishes Christ. What is characteristic of both presentations is that they denigrate the Father. Reluctant to suffer himself, he victimizes Christ instead. Reluctant to forgive, he is prevailed upon by Christ to do so. He is seen as a pitiless ogre whose wrath has to be assuaged, whose disinclination to act has to be overcome, by the loving self-sacrifice of Jesus.

Such crude interpretations of the cross still emerge in some of our evangelical illustrations, as when we describe Christ as coming to rescue us from the judgment of God, or when we portray him as the whipping boy who is punished instead of the real culprit, or as the lightning conductor to which the lethal electrical charge is deflected. John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p. 150 Human history is characterized by ritual sacrifice. It is not at all unique. Nearly every ancient pagan religion includes some element of the practice, ranging from the sacrifice of money and pleasures to the sacrifice of animals and humans. It can easily be assumed, and often is, that the sacrifice of Christ was merely of a greater magnitude than the pagan sacrifices. I’m going to suggest that it is also a fundamentally different kind of sacrifice. The pagan idea of sacrifice is essentially transactional, whereas the Hebrew idea is covenantal. The difference between these two concepts is crucial, in that the first blocks our perception of God’s love and the second magnifies God’s love. The transactional idea suggests that human beings sacrifice to God in order to get from God what He is otherwise unwilling to give. Sacrificing to God possesses merit or purchasing power with God. It changes God, making Him willing to love or favor or bless those who offer sacrifice to Him. In the pagan scheme of thought, the sacrifice acts upon God, altering His fundamental posture toward the human sacrificers. The covenantal idea of sacrifice suggests that the sacrifice is made by God for human beings, not by human beings to God. God makes the sacrifice because He already loves us, as a pledge of His faithfulness to us. The sacrifice can be said to have merit only in the sense that God, by Himself, in Himself, has satisfied His just hatred of sin even as He forgives sinners. He acts in this sacrificing manner purely because of who He is and not because we have done anything to change His heart toward us. Seen through the covenantal lens, the death of Jesus on the cross is understood to be the ultimate acting out of God’s promise to remain faithful to humanity at any and all cost to Himself.

Within the Hebrew narrative, the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross is the outworking of the covenant God made with the world through Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 15). What we see taking place at the cross of Calvary is not an appeasement sacrifice made to God, but rather a covenant sacrifice made by God. In the person of Christ, the very God of the universe is giving His life in faithful covenantal love for His creation.

EQUALITY IS INHERENT IN GOD’S MAKEUP If self-sacrifice is the final act of love at its extremity, the person hanging on the cross of Calvary must be God in the highest sense, or else the death of Christ would be a supreme act of selfishness rather than love. To Ellen White’s thinking, it is the absolute ontological equality of Christ with the Father that distinguishes His death on the cross from every other sacrificial transaction in human history: Christ’s position with His Father is one of equality. This enabled Him to become a sin offering for transgressors. He was fully sufficient to magnify the law and make it honorable. That I May Know Him, p. 292, 1893 This is an extremely simple and yet profound insight. Notice that the sacrifice of Christ as a “sin offering for transgressors” served “to magnify the law” of God. And notice that in order for the magnifying of God’s law to happen, the one dying on the cross must be equal with the Father. What does this mean? Well, God’s law is love. So think this through: if the cross was meant to magnify God’s law of love, God must be the one doing the suffering and dying on the cross. If the person on the cross were not equal with the Father, that inequality would render the cross a supreme act of taking on the part of God rather that a supreme act of giving. Calvary is the outworking of a law, a principle, a truth that is embedded within reality itself. That law is love, and love operates in a specific manner:

• Love is relational integrity, and love suffers when its relational integrity is violated. • Love is characterized by faithful union, and love hurts when its union is broken up. • Love is reciprocal giving, and love agonizes when giving ceases on either side of a relationship. There is nothing arbitrary about any of this. It’s not magic, as if God is conjuring up some kind of effect and imposing it on reality. The death of Christ on the cross is not God exacting an arbitrary price of suffering and death in exchange for His mercy. Rather, it is the outworking of the principle of self-giving love at the farthest reaches of its extremity in response to sin. God cannot stop loving us. If we don’t love Him in return, He will still follow through to keep on loving us at any and all cost to Himself. God is love and cannot be otherwise. God is, therefore, always in the process of being exactly who He is, always in the process of acting out His fundamental essence in whatever form the circumstances demand. Even if all the free moral agents in the universe were to be unfaithful to God, God would continue to be faithful no matter the outcome for Himself, even to the point of the complete expenditure of Himself. And that’s what He did in Christ at Calvary. When the Bible says, “God is love,” it means that God will remain true to all others above and before Himself, at any cost to Himself, even if that cost is all of Himself. In Philippians 2:5-8, Paul’s atonement logic runs like this: • The one who was in very nature God, became human, • voluntarily emptied from Himself the prerogatives that belong to Him as God, • so that He might give Himself, as God, over to death on our behalf.

The anti-trinitarian logic runs like this: • a divine being who was long ago brought into existence by God, • was sacrificed by God, • thus someone other than God suffered and died for our salvation. In the first instance, God is making the sacrifice of Himself. In the second instance, God is requiring the sacrifice of another. In the first instance, God’s justice is satisfied in Himself by the voluntary sacrifice of Himself. In the second instance, God’s justice is satisfied by the sacrifice of another to Him. It is inescapable that the anti-trinitarian doctrine views Jesus as somehow not God in precisely the same sense that the Father is God. It is conceded that Christ is “God” in some sense, but definitely not in an equal, coeternal sense with the Father. In this, the anti-trinitarian doctrine is a form of paganism, because it imagines that godhood, or divinity, is an attainable state for beings that are not God in the ultimate sense. If we remove the idea of innate, eternal relationship from our doctrine of God, we are left with a pretty diabolical picture of God on at least two counts: 1. Apart from a trinitarian doctrine of God, at some point in our reasoning God must be conceived as an absolute singularity of pure ego and/or loveless power. Take your pick, but both options are pretty dark. 2. Apart from a trinitarian doctrine of God, the cross cannot be conceived of as a divine act of pure self-sacrificing love, but must be viewed as God exacting the sacrifice for human salvation from somebody other than Himself. Or we can break it down like this:

• If, way back in eternity past, at the most fundamental level of the divine reality, God is an absolute one, • and this absolute one at some point caused another one to come into existence, • and then, when someone had to suffer and die for fallen humans, this one true God sent forth the one He had brought into existence to suffer and die instead of Himself, • well, then, we are face-to-face, not with the most amazing act of selfsacrificing love imaginable, but with the most frightening act of selfishness imaginable. Calvary is either proof that God is love or proof that God is a bloodthirsty monster. If God is the one doing the suffering and dying at Calvary, then Satan’s fundamental lie—God is selfish—is proven false. But if the one suffering and dying at Calvary is someone other than God, then welcome to the most nightmarish picture of God the human mind can imagine. Welcome to a universe in which the most powerful person in existence is essentially self-serving.

THE SUNDERING OF GOD Return to James White’s brilliant insight. If Christ is eternal God, James reasoned, then we need conceptual language to describe the Father and Son that predates their functional roles as Father and Son. So James suggested that we think of the two as a “firm (a corporate unit) of equal power.” Equal. That’s the vital point. Because if both are God, then they must be fundamentally, ontologically, absolutely, eternally equal!

Ellen White then expanded James’ language to include the Holy Spirit, deliberately setting forth a trinitarian doctrine of God. As noted previously, she employed various terms to depict the three members of the Godhead as they exist apart from their roles as Father, Son, and Spirit: . . . three holiest Beings in heaven. Sermons and Talks, vol. 1, p. 367 . . . three great, infinite powers. Sermons and Talks, vol. 2, p.167 . . . three great powers in heaven. ibid., p. 295 . . . three holy dignitaries of heaven. Sons and Daughters of God, p. 351 . . . three great personal dignitaries and powers of heaven. ibid., p. 351 . . . three highest powers in the universe. Signs of the Times, August 16, 1905 . . . three great and glorious heavenly characters. Manuscript Releases, vol. 6, p. 389 . . . three powers of the Godhead. Australasian Union Conference Record, October 7, 1907 . . . three great agencies. Amazing Grace, p. 150 . . . three representatives of heavenly authority. Manuscript Releases, vol. 6, p. 29 . . . three living persons of the Heavenly Trio. Evangelism, p. 615 Within the realm of God’s own divine reality—before and beyond all our material and reproductive categories as created beings—God consists of the “three living persons of the Heavenly Trio.” God, in all God’s

transcendent God-ness, is composed of three living persons, three equal powers, three great agencies, who are one in nature, one in character, one in love. Of course, this is difficult for us to comprehend, because we are contingent creatures confined to material and reproductive categories that involve being born, beginning to exist, and undergoing developmental processes. We are men and women, that become husbands and wives, that reproduce sons and daughters. We are begotten and we beget. That’s what we are. So it is difficult for us to conceive of categories of being and existence that fundamentally transcend what we are. Therefore, when God moves out of Himself in any mediated form to make Himself accessible to us, there is the risk that we will equate the mediated form with God’s ultimate nature as God. James began to understand this and took a vital theological step toward clarifying the essential equality that necessarily must exist within God’s own reality. Ellen White understood the point with greater clarity and basically said, Think of God as a Heavenly Trio of personal beings who share equal power. It is here, precisely here, that we have laid a theological foundation upon which to build a beautifully coherent atonement theology, in which the sacrifice for our salvation was made by God, not to God. Having identified God as three equal and eternal powers, Ellen White was then able to articulate the death of Christ on the cross as an event that involved “the sundering of the Divine Powers” (SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 7, p. 924). Here, again, she has employed James White’s language in order to convey the idea that the sacrifice for our salvation involved a severing of the eternal oneness of the three great powers that compose the Heavenly Trio. Returning to the language of James White, the sundering of the divine powers first involved one member of the “firm of equal power” stepping out from the firm to become a member of the human race. Whereas James merely said, Christ stepped “out of this firm for a certain time,” Ellen White expanded the idea by saying that Christ stepped out eternally:

In taking our nature, the Savior has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us. . . . To assure us of His immutable counsel of peace, God gave His onlybegotten Son to become one of the human family, forever to retain His human nature. . . . God has adopted human nature in the person of His Son, and has carried the same into the highest heaven. . . . In Christ the family of earth and the family of heaven are bound together. Christ glorified is our brother. Heaven is enshrined in humanity, and humanity is enfolded in the bosom of Infinite Love. The Desire of Ages, p. 25-26 Astoundingly, one of the members of the Heavenly Trio, who had always and only been God for all eternal ages past prior to the creationredemption enterprise, voluntarily became a member of the human race, not for a temporary period of time, but for all eternal ages future. By framing the sacrifice of Christ as a “sundering of the Divine Powers,” Ellen White is operating within a covenant framework, which opens our minds to the self-sacrificing love of God with astounding clarity and beauty. To Abraham was revealed the gravity of the sacrificial ordeal God must endure in order to keep covenant with humanity. Abraham was instructed to cut asunder three sacrificial animals and lay the severed pieces across from one another, forming a path between them. God then appeared as a flaming torch and walked the path between the pieces. “On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram” (Genesis 15:18). The covenant involved God enacting a solemn oath that God would be cut asunder to save humanity. When Daniel prophesied of the coming Messiah and His atoning sacrifice, he employed the language of covenant sacrifice, as well: “Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself” (Daniel 9:26). The word “sundering” means, “to split apart, divide, cleave, rend, separate.” And that’s precisely what God endured to save us. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). God endured a horrific tearing apart of the divine being in order to keep covenant with humanity.

The Savior could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell Him of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God that Their separation was to be eternal. The Desire of Ages, p. 753 By taking humanity upon Himself in the incarnation, while yet retaining His divinity, God willingly submitted Himself to the limitations of human nature so that His covenant oath might be put to the ultimate test, thus proving His love selfless and true. Having laid aside His divine privileges and powers (Philippians 2:5-8), God, in the person of Jesus Christ, entered into the full experiential reality of our sin and guilt. “Numbered with the transgressors,” He bore “the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:12). For a sustained period of time He faced the dark horror of complete separation from the Father and the Spirit, unable to see life for Himself beyond the grave. The hope of resurrection was blotted from His view by our sin. And yet He had declared to Peter that the sacrifice of His life was voluntary, for at any point He could have called to the Father for legions of angels to deliver Him (Matthew 26:53). God in Christ was willing to suffer the horrific demise of eternal death, forever ceasing to exist, to die an eternal death from which there might be no resurrection, rather than allow humanity to suffer the same fate. The cross of Christ is the zenith revelation of God’s love, making forever clear that the Creator of the universe literally loves all others more than His own existence. The entire covenant narrative of Scripture lands at the cross of Calvary for its ultimate meaning. But do not miss this point: it is vital to the logic of the story that God—and no less than God—undergo the covenant cutting in order that His pledge of faithful love be confirmed. And this means that God must be known as an eternal relational unit of love so that when we look upon the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary, we are able to discern that it is God’s very own sacrifice of God’s very own self. In order for the separation of God from God to be real at Calvary, there would need to be persons, plural, in real relationship with one another within the parameters of God’s own intrinsic and divine reality, who could undergo that separation. If we conceive of God as ultimately existing in no relationship at all, existing in the far reaches of eternity

past as a solitary self, existing with no others and, therefore, with no active love, it is inconceivable that God could undergo suffering and sacrifice. We are left with the impassive God of Plato and Aristotle. In the Greek-pagan scheme of thought, God is the absolute one (monism), therefore God is of one substance with all of creation (pantheism), therefore God is impassible (without passion or feeling) and thus incapable of undergoing any real suffering. But in the Hebrew narrative, God is covenant relationship. That is to say, God is eternally engaged in the most emotive interpersonal relationship imaginable, defined by an endless giving and receiving of love between distinct but integrated persons. God is not only omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, but also omni-passionate. God is self-giving passion itself, and the passion of Christ at Calvary reveals this sublime reality. Now, then, once we have conceived of God as a “firm of equal power,” we are prepared to understand the sacrifice of Christ as the ultimate outworking of that power. Probing in that direction, our discoveries in the next chapter will be delightfully surprising.

“The way the cross reframes reality is so revolutionary that it will inevitably flatten out all domination systems and establish an egalitarian harmony unlike anything the world has ever known.”

CHAPTER NINE

THE COVENANT NEGATED

  There is a psychology that lies just beneath the surface of the antitrinitarian picture of God, as is the case with all theological orientations. Anti-trinitarianism is a theology of God that serves to formulate a fundamentally hierarchical construct of reality. By contrast, covenantal trinitarianism suggests a fundamentally egalitarian construct of reality. Each of the two perspectives entail, not merely a theoretical idea, but a sociological structure with implications for human relations. One of the most fascinating books in my library, by A. Okechukwu Ogbonnaya, bears the descriptive title, On Communitarian Divinity: An African Interpretation of the Trinity. Among the book’s many excellent insights, this one stands out as vital: It is almost a truism to say that how one conceives and speaks of God affects the way one lives with other human beings. The effect moves in the opposite direction as well: we are often drawn to a given theological perspective because it supports the way we want relationships to operate.

The point is, what we believe about God matters immensely! Ellen White explains just how immensely: The whole spiritual life is molded by our conceptions of God; and if we cherish erroneous views of His character, our souls will sustain injury. Review and Herald, January 14, 1890 In this chapter, I will suggest that the anti-trinitarian picture of God is injurious to the soul by virtue of the fact that it portrays God as essentially unilateral, hierarchical, and power-oriented. From that premise, relationships will tend to sustain or take on unilateral, hierarchical, power-oriented constructs.

SUBORDINATIONISM Anti-trinitarianism holds that God the Father is “the one true God” both chronologically and ontologically. Then at some point along the way in God’s solitary existence, He either created or gave birth to a Son. The Son of God is thought to be God in a secondary sense and the Holy Spirit is regarded as the emanation of the Father. So then, an organizational structure is evident, in which the Father is over the Son and the Son is under the Father. This is called subordinationism: “the doctrine that the first person of the Holy Trinity is superior to the second, and the second superior to the third” (dictionary.com). Said another way, God is a hierarchical power structure. Anti-trinitarianism and subordinationism constitute a theological edifice built entirely on an unbiblical interpretation of the biblical word “begotten.”1 By ignoring the sonship narrative of the Old Testament, which is the source of the New Testament usage of “begotten,” advocates of anti-trinitarianism extrapolate from the word “begotten” that Jesus was birthed by the Father and is, therefore, subordinate to the Father. This interpretation of “begotten” then determines their misreading of Paul’s statement regarding the relationship between Christ and the Father in 1 Corinthians 15:28.

Now when all things are made subject to Him [Christ], then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him [the Father] who put all things under Him [Christ], that God [the Father] may be all in all. In this passage, the advocates of anti-trinitarianism think they are reading an account of Christ being “under” the Father by virtue of the Father being a greater God and Christ being a lesser God who was brought forth into existence by the Father. But in this passage Paul is not working out God’s hierarchical reality before the creation of humanity. He is articulating the covenant purpose achieved by Christ as a member of the human race in relation to God the Father. Christ is our new representative head, occupying the position that was vacated by Adam. Paul is not trying to persuade us that God’s own intrinsic social arrangement is hierarchical, but rather that humanity, in Christ, has been brought back under God.2 All ideas have implications. A premise leads to a series of logical deductions. My conception of God will significantly play into the way I perceive and relate to people and the way I formulate all of my secondary doctrinal beliefs. Within the official doctrinal statements of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, we can see that there is a direct connection between what we believe about God and what we believe about the church. As we saw previously, Fundamental Belief Number two of the Seventh-day Adventist Church holds that, “There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three coeternal Persons.” From a theological premise, Fundamental Belief Number twelve, The Church, articulates an ecclesiastical view: The church is the body of Christ, a community of faith of which Christ Himself is the Head . . . . The church is one body with many members, called from every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. In Christ we are a new creation; distinctions of race, culture, learning, and nationality, and differences between high and low, rich and poor, male and female, must not be divisive among us. We are all equal in

Christ, who by one Spirit has bonded us into one fellowship with Him and with one another; we are to serve and be served without partiality or reservation. Through the revelation of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures we share the same faith and hope, and reach out in one witness to all. This unity has its source in the oneness of the triune God. Note the crucial words, “We are all equal in Christ.” The doctrine of the Trinity as held by Seventh-day Adventists constitutes an egalitarian vision of God that yields an egalitarian vision of the church. The flow of thought is beautifully simple. We believe in the essential equality of all human beings as the natural outworking of our belief in the essential equality of the three members of the Trinity. Premise: God is a unity of three coeternal, coequal Persons. Conclusion: the church is a community of equals that compose one body. God as a Heavenly Trio of equal, coeternal persons, constitutes a theological premise that inevitably leads to an egalitarian ecclesiology. If God’s ultimate reality consists of relational equality, then relational equality is conceivable for the body of Christ. By contrast, to view God as a solitary self who causes the Son to exist and from whom the Holy Spirit emanates, constitutes a theological premise that inevitably leads to a hierarchical ecclesiology. Really, there are only two basic doctrines of God from which to choose: 1. God is a solitary supreme being, with Christ coming into existence after God and, therefore, falling under God. In this case, we live in a universe that is inherently structured for hierarchical power dynamics. 2. God is a relational synergy of three equal persons who are one in nature and character. In this case, we live in a universe that is inherently structured for the equality of free persons coexisting in love.

In short, the universe is either organized for power or for love. And if the universe is organized for love, perhaps love itself is power, but power of a different kind.

THE CROSS IS THE POWER OF GOD Paul understood that the self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross had the effect of overturning, in principle, all the power structures of the world. Jesus achieved this monumental task, Paul explains, by setting in motion an entirely different kind of power, a power of such magnitude that it will inevitably bring “to nothing” everything contrary to it. The way the cross reframes reality is so revolutionary that it will inevitably flatten out all domination systems and establish an egalitarian harmony unlike anything the world has ever known. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 Paul is employing poetic irony here to deliver his point with clarity. The wisdom of the world isn’t wisdom at all, but foolishness, and “the foolishness of God” is the true wisdom. What could be apparently more foolish to the onlooking world, with its addiction to hierarchical power dynamics, than the most powerful person in the universe, God Himself, refusing to exercise His power to preserve Himself against the onslaught of His enemies?

Paul states unequivocally that the death of Jesus on the cross—which from all appearance looks like complete weakness and defeat—is “the power of God.” Paul is playing with the word “power” here in order to reframe it, in order to offer a new definition of power. He is fully aware that the world defines power as sheer muscle and might, as the exertion of authority over people. And in the face of all that, he essentially says, No, that’s not power at all, but weakness. The only real power is on display at the cross, with God Himself voluntarily giving His life for His enemies while giving forth nothing but unreserved mercy, forgiveness, and love. Now that’s true power, because it completely changes the game by changing the categories and definitions altogether. The cross of Christ has completely moved the goalpost for all relationships, so that power has become weakness and weakness has become power. Reality as we know it has been inverted in Christ. The ultimate objective is no longer to have the position of power over others, but rather to have the position of service under others, which is a different kind of power. In fact, having power over others was never true power in the first place. It’s just that we’ve all been deceived by the allure of self-exaltation, so we have imagined that up is up and down is down. In reality, up is down and down is up. The world naturally arranges itself hierarchically. Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings have been in competition with one another, striving to dominate one another, establishing pecking orders, subjugating the weak under the strong and generally assuming that the only way to organize people is within top-down systems. Why do we so naturally think this way? If we pan out to take in the larger biblical narrative, we are reminded that sin was introduced into the world by a power-mongering megalomaniac by the name of Lucifer. He became obsessed with the delusional quest to exalt himself over God and occupy the throne of the universe (Isaiah 14:12-14). Then this mighty fallen angel led humanity into rebellion against God on the same premise (Genesis 3:1-5). The principle of sin entered into the

human psyche in the form of a desire to place self over others and, ultimately, over God Himself. Once this diabolical principle was introduced into the human thought process, it proceeded to infect all relationships. This was made evident by Adam’s immediate impulse to justify himself by blaming Eve, and Eve’s impulse to justify herself by blaming the serpent. Both Adam and Eve, by implication, were blaming God (Genesis 3:11-13). Immediately after their fall, God explained to the first humans that part of the curse of sin is that they would now be inclined to engage in rivalry against one another, each seeking to dominate the other, resulting in a general historic trajectory of males dominating females (Genesis 3:16). The next chapter of the story reveals the beginnings of sibling rivalry, with Cain killing his brother Abel (Genesis 4). Cain then became the first city-builder, making him the founder of post-sin civilization, moving humanity toward the development of systemic evil, which would be facilitated through hierarchical structures (Genesis 4:17). A few generations later, Lamech decided to follow the example of revenge set by Cain, murdering a man for merely wounding him (Genesis 4:23-24). Retaliatory violence soon became wholesale violence. In due course violence overtook the world to the point that “the end of all flesh”—or the extinction of humanity by means of pandemic violence—became inevitable. As a result, God found it necessary to intervene with a flood in order to salvage the human race (Genesis 6:1-8). After the Flood, a descendent of Cain by the name of Nimrod became the founder of Babel and Nineveh, cities organized around the principle of self-exaltation (Genesis 10:8-12; 11:1-9). Babel then becomes the notorious Babylon of history, characterized by self-exaltation and violence (Daniel 2-4), so much so that the king of Babylon becomes a biblical type of Satan himself, who spawned the ideology of selfexaltation in the first place (Isaiah 14). Babylon then shows up throughout Scripture as the archetypal kingdom of self-exaltation and violence, until it finally becomes a metaphor of the eschatological empire of evil that implodes under the weight of its own oppressive power dynamics (Revelation 14-18). Paul continues:

For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 1 Corinthians 2:2-8 The point is so vital that Paul is repetitive. He reasons like this: • The world operates by assumed notions of wisdom and power that are actually foolishness and weakness. • Jesus came to the world and revealed a wisdom so counterintuitive to human thinking that it looks like foolishness to us. He set in motion a quality of power so opposite to the power dynamics of the world that it looks like weakness to us. • The universal delusion runs so deep that while the wise scholars and power brokers of the world were crucifying Christ, they were oblivious to what they were really doing. While they were exercising their supposed “power” in accordance with their supposed “wisdom,” they were actually crucifying none other than “the Lord of glory.” If they had known they were doing this, they would not have done it, because they would have realized that their wisdom and power was going to backfire on them and bring them “to nothing.” At the cross of Calvary, Paul insists we witness the Almighty weakness of God and the infinitely wise foolishness of God! There is a power in love that is foreign to the power mongers of our world. There is a wisdom in self-sacrifice that makes no sense to the reasoning process of fallen human minds. With the world’s definition of power on the table,

just one pressing question hangs before the universe, and before every beating heart: Is power or love ultimate with God? The cross of Calvary answers the question with irrefutable finality, clarity, and beauty. How so? Well, according to Paul, what makes the cross the definitive remake of the world is the fact that the one hanging on the cross was none other than “the Lord of glory.” Not a created being. Not a secondary begotten deity. Not anyone other than God in the highest sense, “the Lord of glory.” Paul pushes back hard on the world’s power by pointing to the consummate expression of true power at the cross of Calvary, where we witness “the Lord of glory” laying down His life in self-giving love for the world. Calvary is the definitive event of history precisely because the one hanging on the cross is none other than the most powerful person in the universe, God Himself. By reducing Christ to a secondary deity— whatever that means—the anti-trinitarian doctrine of God creates a perceptual barrier that prevents us from understanding the reframing of power Christ brings to us in the gospel. If the one hanging on the cross is even one step out or down from the Lord of glory, the entire logic of the gospel crumbles into a self-serving heap. The cross of Christ puts to shame the lie that power, not love, is ultimate with God. And in so doing, Christ offers to the world a new structuring principle:

Go down rather than up. Greatest is defined by serving rather than by being served. Operate by a power-under-others relational dynamic rather than by a power-over-others one.

THE AUTHORITY-LIBERTY SPECTRUM For anti-trinitarianism and its ideological sibling, subordinationism, hierarchical authority represents the highest level of maturity to which relationships may rise. Why? Well, for the simple reason that, according to anti-trinitarianism, hierarchy is intrinsic to God’s own nature, and, of course, we can rise no higher than God in our relational maturity. I will suggest that hierarchical authority is utilitarian at its highest level of operation and, therefore, penultimate to God’s highest ideal. It serves its purpose by gradually vanishing from necessity. Even apart from the biblical revelation, which shows top-down authority to be a sub-optimal relational dynamic, simple relational logic quickly leads us to the same conclusion. In other words, it is intuitive to the development of relationships that love ultimately displaces the need for the exercise of authority. To the degree that human beings engage in responsible self-governance, liberty expands and authority becomes increasingly unnecessary. Conversely, to the degree that human beings do not engage in responsible self-governance, authority becomes necessary in order to mitigate relational violation and its resulting harm. This is what we might call The Authority-Liberty Spectrum. AUTHORITY

LIBERTY

Responsible self-governance has the effect of flattening out social relations into egalitarian circles of mutually-exchanged influence, each

one contributing their voluntary service to the whole community without any power being exerted by any one person over any other. A lack of responsible self-governance inevitably leads to restricted freedom and the imposition of authority. In politics, the authority-liberty spectrum looks something like this: Dictatorship: the exercise of absolute arbitrary power, especially in a cruel and oppressive way, by one person over many. To the degree that a nation descends morally and becomes criminal by its own libertine excesses, it will become susceptible to dictatorship. A lack of selfcontrol leads to a state of weakness in which a people is liable to be controlled by a malevolent external force. Monarchy: a form of government in which all authority is centered in a single individual, a king or queen, with at least the notion that the ruler should be just, but with the risk that the ruler may become unjust and slide into despotism. Democracy: a system of government that operates by the will of the whole eligible citizenry of a state, which emphasizes majority vote as the expression of the people’s will, but ideally expressed through representatives. Republicanism: a system of government that operates by the will of the whole eligible citizenry of a state, which emphasizes the superiority of representation over pure majority vote, representation serving as a safeguard against the majority imposing its will on a minority. Libertarianism: a form of governance in which the state exerts the least amount of authority possible over its citizens. As a political philosophy that advocates for society operating at the extreme freedom end of the authority-liberty spectrum, libertarianism exists only as a political ideal that has never been successfully implemented. The reason it has never been tried is because it is completely dependent on the responsible selfgovernance of the general population for its success, which has never been universally plausible. It is discerned that in a libertarian form of

government, the minority rich and powerful would increasingly and inevitably dominate, exploit, and oppress the poor and weak majority, with no governmental authority to stop them. Covenantalism: an ideal system of responsible self-governance in which all citizens live without imposing harm on one another. Covenantalism, we might say, is a fully realized libertarianism. Externally imposed authority is unnecessary due to the internal operation of love. Covenantalism is the vision of the world that was cast by Moses and the prophets, which Israel failed to implement, and which was fully realized in the person of Christ. The good news of the kingdom of God, which Jesus fully embodied, is the covenantal love of God worked out in and applied to all relationships. According to the biblical narrative, the final state of the world will be covenantal, consisting of a universal community in which each one exists with complete freedom without violating others. The covenantal state is one in which complete freedom and perfect love are seamlessly merged as one experiential reality. Scripture describes the covenantal state with these poetic words: They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. Micah 4:3-4 Imagine every person with their own plot of land, each one a responsible steward of the resources their land yields, coexisting with every other landowner without fear of any person imposing harm. Imagine that each of those individuals is completely content with what they have, and free from all desire to possess or control anybody else’s land or resources. Because each individual is responsibly self-governed, nobody needs to tell anybody else what to do and nobody needs to be protected from anybody else. Therefore, no commonly employed police force or military or governing political bodies would be needed. When people are self-governed by covenantal integrity, no externally imposed governance is required. Stated most simply, if each person is doing what they ought

to be doing, nobody needs to tell anybody what to do. This is the biblical vision of a covenant-governed world. Institutional governments are necessitated by human dysfunction and immaturity. They accommodate the fallen human condition by providing each of us protection from the rest of us. Where there are individuals inclined to transgress other individuals, governing mechanisms must be put in place to stop bad people from doing the bad things they will do if they are not stopped. But imagine a world in which no bad people do any bad things to anybody. In that kind of world, policing authorities would be unnecessary. It is evident, then, that authority does not exist as an end in itself. The moment authority does exist as an end in itself, authority tips in the direction of authoritarianism. Legitimate authority only exists to the degree that it is necessary in order to externally impose restrictions where self-governance is not occurring. The ideal state of humankind is absolute freedom with an absolutely operational moral compass of love, for where there is no misuse of free will, there is no infliction of harm; and where there is no infliction of harm, there is no need for the exercise of authority to prevent harm. A short and simple way to express the tension at play along the authority-liberty spectrum is as follows: Love necessitates freedom in order to exist, and freedom necessitates love in order to continue existing. Freedom is dangerous to the degree that people don’t love, and freedom is beneficial to the degree that people do love. The law of God is the primary biblical case that makes the point about the authority-liberty spectrum.

RESTRICTION OR FREEDOM? “Thou shalt . . .” “Thou shalt not . . .”

At lower levels of moral maturity, we hear God’s law speak to us with an authoritative voice of moral mandate, whereas at higher levels of moral maturity we hear God’s law speak to us of a perfect liberty so at rest in God’s love that the voice of authority goes silent. The external exertion of authority is necessary to the degree that mutual love is not operable between free agents—not ideal, but necessary. In God’s system, externally imposed authority is provisional toward freedom, with the goal being that those who are provisionally under the law would become agents of responsible self-governance. Said another way, God is aiming to bring us to a place where nobody has to tell us what to do and, yet, we do the right thing. This is the ideal to which the law itself points. But due to our fallen condition, this ideal strikes us as idealistic and unattainable. Nevertheless, we cannot lower the standard to meet us where we are, lest we lose sight of the noble heights to which we may attain. We must maintain a clear vision of God’s ideal, always remaining under its critique and striving to meet it. The authority-liberty spectrum is a delicate matter because we need authority as long as we need it. But God’s ultimate plan, as envisioned by the gospel, is that we would not need it. So what are we to do? Well, we make a utilitarian use of authority, as needed, without becoming addicted to it or dependent on it. We cultivate relationships in such a way as to make authority gradually less and less necessary, the way parents raise children into adult autonomy, and the way couples hope their marriages will go as they mature in one another’s love. Think about how love works in relation to free will. If two free wills are in agreement, there is no sense of one being over the other, nor of one needing to submit to the other. Only at the point that the two free wills pull in opposite directions does one need to be submitted to in order to keep the relationship from disintegrating. So, at one level of maturity the law of God exerts authority, while at another it ceases to exert authority.

According to Paul, “the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless” (1 Timothy 1:8-9). What does this mean? Well, it means that a person who is in harmony with the law from the inside out does not need to be imposed upon to keep the law from the outside in. Paul is saying that the Ten Commandments communicate to us in the context of sin. If the Fall of mankind had never occurred, the law of God would never have been formulated as a list of requirements. All statements of moral mandate —“Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . .”—assume the presence of transgression. Where there is no transgression, no moral negation statements are necessary. The law is only needful in the face of sin, according to Paul, and ceases to exert authority over us to the degree that it takes on the form of love inside of us. A relationship in which there is perfect love is, by definition, a state of relational rest from authority dynamics. This is what Paul is getting at in his profound yet simple framing of God’s law. In Galatians, Paul works through this line of reasoning in detail. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Galatians 2:16, KJV For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise. What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made . . . Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Galatians 3:18-25

First, Paul informs us that the faith by which we are saved is “the faith of Jesus.” Notice that it is His faith, not ours, that saves. Paul wants us to understand that in Christ we encounter God’s faith operating toward us before we exercise faith toward Him. Within the narrative framework of the gospel, God made promises through the Hebrew prophets. In fact, the Old Testament is a covenant document laying out all God promised He would do through the Messiah in order to maintain relational faithfulness to fallen humanity at any cost to Himself, even to the point of death. That’s the whole Old Testament in a nutshell. “The faith of Jesus” is the New Testament term that encapsulates what this entire covenant-keeping reality looks like. It means that God, in Christ, acted with perfect fidelity toward fallen humanity. What is the gospel, according to Paul? The gospel is the good news that the covenant of love has been fulfilled in the divine-human person of Christ on all levels of relationship: • God toward humanity • Humanity toward God • And humanity toward humanity In Christ, relational integrity is fulfilled in all directions. The God of Abraham is a God of covenant-keeping fidelity. He is completely trustworthy, reliable, constant, and unswerving in His love for us. He is faithful toward us even though we have been faithless toward Him. Our sin cannot change His heart from faithful to unfaithful. This is what Ellen White articulated as God’s “changeless love for the human family” (Testimonies to Ministers, p. 92). Jesus is the complete fulfillment of God’s covenant promise from both the human side and the divine side of the relational equation. As God, He was relationally faithful to humanity. As man, He was relationally faithful to God and all others. The circle of faithful love that was broken by sin is reconnected and set in reciprocal motion by Christ.

That’s the gospel. So, then, because Paul is reasoning forward from the Old Testament foundation of God’s covenant faithfulness to us, he does not tell us to exercise faith in Jesus in a vacuum, but rather on the solid premise of God’s faithful love brought to light in Christ. The faith of Jesus, Paul reasons, is the gospel, and as such is the impetus for our faith in Jesus, which is not the gospel, but rather our response to the gospel. Therefore, Paul warns us against imagining that the restoration of the broken relationship falls to us, “by the works of the law.” Absolutely not! To operate from that premise is to deny God’s good character, to deny His faithful love, to deny the fact that He kept His covenant promise in Christ. “For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise,” Paul reasons. That is, if we expect God’s favor in response to our lawkeeping, then we stand in denial of His covenant promise. Legalism isn’t merely a misguided expenditure of effort, it is an insult to God’s character. It is a refusal to believe in God for who God really is. Legalism assumes that I am better than God, that He is the one in the hard, cold, estranged state, while I, by my law-keeping, can get God to move toward me. Paul then questions, “What purpose then does the law serve?” If God didn’t intend for us to keep the law as a means of salvation, what is it for? And here comes the masterstroke of Paul’s theology: It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made . . . . The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Galatians 3:19, 24-25 While the law possesses no power to save, it does serve the vital role of a “tutor,” a “schoolmaster” (KJV), a “guardian” (NIV). The law was “added” or made necessary because of sin, to serve as a teacher to keep human conscience alive with a sense of right and wrong and, thereby, to

arouse in us a sense of need for a Savior. According to Paul, the law operates as a teacher and a protective measure, but it cannot save. Jesus saves, and He does so in such a way that His covenant faithfulness draws us into covenant faithfulness with Him. The law recedes in its exertion of authority as our tutor to the degree that love governs us from within. So, then, Paul’s view of the law does not generate disobedience to the law, but actually produces obedience of a more mature kind, of the covenant kind, arising from a heart of love and not from a sense of obligation in order to merit salvation. Paul’s logic is tight. To live toward God as if outward compliance to the law could earn salvation is, in fact, a denial of the gospel. Salvation by works is a futile attempt for the simple reason that we cannot get from God by our law-keeping what He’s already given us by His free grace. After negating the law as a means of salvation, Paul then articulates what we might call the power equation of the gospel. “Righteousness,” Paul explains, only comes “by faith” (Galatians 5:5). I cannot attain righteousness by pursuing it as an end in itself, as a moral goal to be achieved, as something we do by trying hard enough. Faith alone is the means by which righteousness can be attained. That is the first thing Paul wants us to get clear in our heads. But then he goes one vital step further: while righteousness is only attained by faith, faith only “works by love” (Galatians 5:6, KJV). The word here translated “works” is energeo in the Greek, from which we get the word energy. Paul is saying that God’s love, as revealed in Christ, is the power source that awakens faith to action. Righteousness is the what, and faith energized by love is the how. There is an axiomatic relationship between righteousness, faith, and love—and love is the catalyst that sets the experience in motion. This is why it is vitally important that the law never be preached except in the context of the gospel. To preach the law without the gospel is evangelistically disastrous and spiritually dangerous, according to Paul. It is, in fact, a form of spiritual abuse. “The letter kills,” he warns (2 Corinthians 3:6). Preaching the law apart from the gospel kills people spiritually, emotionally, and relationally, because the law without the

gospel can only impose “condemnation” (verse 9), which can only drive people to either legalism or despair. Paul is not teaching antinomianism. He’s not against the law. Far from it. He’s for the law in the only way being for the law is really for the law. The law serves its correct function, he insists, as a tutor that reveals our need of a Savior. Legalism is the real antinomianism, while giving the false impression that the law is defended. The fact is, antinomianism is on display when we preach obedience while failing to preach the gospel. If we genuinely embrace what Paul teaches in Galatians about the moral law, then, on a deep mental and emotional level, we will thrust ourselves with helpless dependence upon God’s grace for our rescue. All sense of self-dependence will be shattered in one painful yet liberating burst of self-negating realization. The deep, subconscious, carnal security we find in our natural legalism will be yanked from our ego-centric souls and we will run in nakedness to Christ for the covering that His righteousness alone can provide. With that work done, Paul can then ingeniously frame the idea of “law” in terms of things the law is not “against”: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 So simple and so profound at once! The law of God as a behavioral code—expressing itself in the form of authoritative moral mandates—stands “against” the inclination of fallen human beings to violate one another with behaviors that are contrary to love. But where the fruit of the Spirit is present—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control —there is no law, in a sense. In what sense? Well, in the sense that while the law has vanished from consciousness as a moral code forbidding certain behaviors, it is inscribed on the fine mental, emotional, and

volitional makeup of our hearts. And this is what Scripture calls “the new covenant.”

THE NEW COVENANT The gospel of Christ is the means by which God is restoring the world to a condition in which each person is responsibly self-governed from the inside out, with no need for being governed from the outside in. This is called the new covenant: This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Jeremiah 31:33-34 The new covenant is God’s law written in the heart. This is a biblical way of expressing the idea of the human being operating by the internal principle of love with no need for the law to be externally imposed. To the degree that God’s law of love is written in my heart—woven into the fabric of my own thinking-feeling-choosing process—the law as an authority over me becomes unnecessary. The law of God is a transcript of God’s character. It is not a legal structure above God or external to Him. The legal language of Scripture is simply a practical explanation of the love by which the moral universe operates, or an expression of the outworking of the innate goodness of God’s nature. God’s law is not arbitrary, as there are no arbitrary elements in His character. He has made things the way they are as an expression of who He is. Hence, the principles of God’s character, the principles of His law, are inherently built into all of creation. Expressed in positive terms, this love is manifested in the ceaseless giving of each free agent to all others. Expressed in negative terms, God’s love forbids living for self by violating others. But where there is no sin, the negative formulation of the law would be unnecessary. Ellen White probes this concept in a fascinating way regarding the angels:

In heaven, service is not rendered in a spirit of legality. When Satan rebelled against the law of Jehovah, the thought that there was a law came to the angels almost as an awakening to something unthought of. Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, p. 109 Before sin entered the universe, created intelligences did not live with a conscious awareness of a law. The Ten Commandments in the form of a legal code engraved on tables of stone did not exist. And yet it did exist. The law was innate to their angelic natures. Spontaneously, as the outworking of God’s character, which was inscribed upon their internal makeup, the angels lived for God and for one another with no sense that there was a law telling them to do so. After sin entered the universe, the idea that there is a right way to live and a wrong way to live became a topic for conscious evaluation. Sin suggested an alternative way of living. God went on record explaining the difference between right and wrong. The issues began to be articulated in terms of law and sin. So it began to be seen that God’s love is right in stark contrast to everything contrary to love, which is the essence of all wrong. Hence the idea of righteousness versus sin emerged. Righteousness, on the one hand, is more than legal requirement. “Righteousness is love, and love is the light and the life of God” (Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, p. 18). Sin, on the other hand, is anything contrary to righteousness, which is to say, anything contrary to love. Sin is not, therefore, merely the breaking of legal requirements that exist on tables of stone. Sin is the breaking of God’s heart of love in the form of any relational violation. Expressing the ideal to which the new covenant reaches, Ellen White articulated the matter in language almost too lofty for fallen human minds to grasp: All true obedience comes from the heart. It was heart work with Christ. And if we consent, He will so identify Himself with our thoughts and aims, so blend our hearts and minds into conformity to His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses. The Desire of Ages, p. 668

She would have us imagine ourselves doing whatever we want, and the whole time doing what God wants. The new covenant envisions a complete marriage of human desire with divine desire as one seamless impulse—no discord, no tension, no opposing interests, and no externally imposed top-down authority necessary. If, as anti-trinitarianism suggests, God is fundamentally hierarchical in His own makeup, operating by authority dynamics that move from the top down, then the relational dynamics of the new covenant are inconceivable. How so? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it, now that we’ve seen the beautiful highlands of covenantal freedom to which we may ascend in Christ. If the Bible’s description of the new covenant is true—and we have every reason to believe that it is—anti-trinitarianism would have us believe that human beings can rise to a higher standard of freedom from authority than God Himself experiences. Of course, no anti-trinitarian intends to convey such an idea, but it is the logical outworking of their hierarchical doctrine of God if reasoned through consistently. Intentional or not, therefore, a consistently held anti-trinitarian picture of God negates the gospel of Christ and the new covenant dynamics entailed in the gospel. In our final chapter, we will explore the church as the relational laboratory in which the implications of the new covenant are to be worked out to the glory of God.

1 Yes, there are trinitarian branches of Christian theology that subscribe to subordinationism, most notably Catholicism and Calvinism (Reformed Theology), and both have their reasons. But other theological systems lie outside of the scope of our present consideration of anti-trinitarianism.

2 For a detailed exegetical treatment of 1 Corinthians 15:28, see The Sonship of Christ.

“A beautiful communal love lies at the center of reality, and we are invited in. In fact, one of us is already there, awaiting our arrival.”

CHAPTER TEN

THE COVENANT COMMUNITY

  In order to comprehend the messianic identity and mission of Jesus, we must be intellectually obedient to the narrative arc of Scripture. Antitrinitarianism essentially diverts us from following that arc by concocting an identity for Christ that is foreign to the actual story the prophets tell. And if we fail to discern the identity and mission of Christ, we will not possess the raw theological materials from which to construct an accurate vision of the church, which Christ founded for the purpose of living out, as a community, the glorious covenant implications of His identity. In this final chapter of our journey, we will trace the natural outworking of the biblical narrative. In so doing, the rather intentional point of the story will become so beautifully evident that we will see by sheer contrast that anti-trinitarianism is an exercise in missing the point.

LOOKING BACKWARD TO LOOK FORWARD As the messianic “Prince of the Covenant” (Daniel 11:22), Jesus came to our world saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

He was not, however, simply announcing Himself to be a king of the same fundamental character as all the other kings before Him. His kingdom was to be of an essentially different order than all others. The Greek word here translated “repent” is metanoeō. It means, change your mind, think differently, perceive things in a way you never have before, turn around and go the opposite direction. For the people of His time (no less than for we ourselves), to grasp the kingdom of Jesus would require a complete re-orientation on the landscape of reality. He wasn’t anything like what they expected. The collective Jewish imagination held a cherished vision of what the messianic king of Israel would be like, and Jesus was about to shatter that vision. Following Him into the new kingdom would require a total paradigm shift. To understand what Jesus is doing, we need to remember the backstory from which He is enacting His mission. He is fully aware of the covenant script of the Old Testament. After all, He is the Yahweh God who actively engaged with the patriarchs and prophets within that script. He is, therefore, the very same Yahweh who told Israel that He was opposed to monarchy as a governing system (1 Samuel 8). So when He comes into the world announcing that He is launching a new monarchy, we can be certain that subversion is in the works. Consider the basics of the backstory.

ACT ONE Through the prophet Moses, Yahweh (the pre-incarnate Christ) delivered the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. Moses explained to them that God’s plan was that they would exist in the world directly under God as His covenant people. They were to be led by Yahweh under the educational influence of His prophets, as opposed to being under the ruling governance of kings. Prophets are educators, not rulers. The function of a prophet is to teach the people God’s covenant principles and call them to account when they

are not operating by those principles. To be educated by God’s prophets is to be cultivated toward free and responsible self-governance, whereas to be ruled by kings is to be relieved of responsibility and stunted in moral development. Moses explained that following God’s covenant principles would result in such extraordinary national flourishing on all levels—socially, agriculturally, economically—that Israel would become like a light on a hill to the other nations. Gentiles would be attracted to Yahweh through the demonstration of His covenant principles in Israel (Deuteronomy 45). In this way, Israel would be a “kingdom of priests,” not of monarchs (Exodus 19). Israel would mediate the knowledge of Yahweh and His covenant to all the other nations of the world and invite them to join the thriving system. In this way, Israel was to overtake the world, not by military conquest, but by disseminating covenant knowledge for the blessing and elevation of all peoples. But Israel was persistently resistant to the covenant plan outlined by God through Moses.

ACT TWO As the story unfolded, the children of Israel pandered after the governing system of the nations around them. “Give us a king,” they demanded. Through the prophet Samuel, God told the people that monarchy was a bad idea and explained what the dire consequences would be: the king will take your daughters as concubines, take your sons off to war, and tax your lands in order to pay for his military exploits. But the people insisted, “No, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8). They were opting to live under authoritarian rulers rather than become a people of responsible selfgovernance. Yahweh never wanted His people to operate like the other nations of the world, with one man at the top ruling “over” them. To the contrary, God’s people were to be a covenant community of equals under Yahweh’s benevolent system of love. But the people insisted on monarchy as their governing system, so God accommodated their rebellious desire. The first king of Israel was Saul, followed by David,

followed by Solomon, followed by internal conflict, which led to the division of the kingdom into Israel in the North and Judah in the South, followed by a long succession of mostly despotic rulers who proved the fundamental evil of monarchy. From the time of King David onward, Old Testament prophets began to appropriate the language of monarchy to foretell the coming of a messianic king who would occupy the throne of David. But the prophets indicated in various ways that this “king” would be different. Just how different He would be could not have been fully imagined.

ACT THREE Having rejected God’s covenantal system and having adopted the monarchical-military system of the Gentile world, it was inevitable that Israel would find itself engaged in constant war and eventually dominated by stronger kingdoms. In due course, sure enough, Israel came under the military boot heel of Babylon. After 70 years in Babylonian captivity, Israel came under Persian rule, then under Greek rule, and then under Roman rule. The decades lapsed on, and then the centuries, with Israel under the domination of Gentile nations. Incorrigibly resistant to God’s covenant system, the Jewish people imagined that they needed a warrior messiah who would rescue them from their Roman overlords by means of violent revolution. Then Jesus came. But He wasn’t the shock and awe military messiah they wanted, so they crucified Him as an enemy to their violent ambitions.

MIMICKING AND MOCKING When Jesus came into the world as the long-awaited Messiah, rather than overtly rejecting monarchy, He commandeered it. He completely flipped the notion of “king” upside down. As we watch the deliberate maneuvers of His public ministry, it becomes evident that He is mimicking monarchy while mocking it as a failed system. The people want a king, so He gives them one, but nothing like what they expect. In Christ,

“king” is redefined as servant, and “kingdom” becomes a nonviolent community of forgivers. Once the people get a sense of the kind of power He possesses, they are eager for Him to establish a throne in Israel and conquer the Romans. Instead, King Jesus proceeds to heal the sick, feed the hungry, bless children, hang out with the moral outcasts of society, become the friend of sinners, throw forgiveness around as if it were free, open the door of fellowship to Gentiles, rebuke the religious leaders for their selfrighteousness and bigotry, teach His followers to forgive their enemies and respond to evil with good, announce the end of the prevailing religious system, and declare that He is starting something of an entirely different order. And if all of that is not enough, He then allows Himself to be arrested, unjustly condemned, and crucified, all while obviously possessing the raw power to decimate His enemies, leaving everyone feeling like, “We thought He was the one, but apparently He wasn’t.” But He was. It’s just that He had to completely shatter their delusional expectations of a world ruled by power in order to construct from the broken pieces a world ruled by love. As we read the Gospel accounts, it becomes clear that Jesus engaged in a deliberately satirical enactment of king and kingdom. “Give us a king,” the people had been clamoring for centuries. So, He gives them a king to end all kings. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” He announces. And then He proceeds to reenact Israel’s history with a plot twist nobody sees coming. First, He is baptized, paralleling Israel’s new birth through the Red Sea as God’s only begotten son among the nations. After His baptism, Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, paralleling Israel’s journey into the wilderness after the Red Sea crossing. But whereas Israel failed in the desert, He comes through the ordeal victorious.

Coming out of the wilderness, He calls twelve disciples, paralleling the twelve tribes of Israel. These twelve men are Israel 2.0. They are the beginnings of a new covenant people, called the “church,” through whom God’s covenant purpose will be fulfilled. Having reconstituted Israel with the twelve disciples, He leads them to a mountain and reteaches them the law, thus reenacting the giving of the law to Israel at Mount Sinai. The Sermon on the Mount constitutes His kingdom manifesto, but it is not like anything anybody has ever imagined (Matthew 5-7). Yes, there’s going to be a revolution, but it’s going to be a non-violent revolution, according to Jesus, a revolution of love, not of power, a revolution that fights, not with violence, but with forgiveness. Evil will be overcome with good. As Jesus proceeds to advance His kingdom, it is evident that He has no structural or positional authority. The authority He has is inherent to His character and teachings, not His position. His authority arises intrinsically from the veracity of what He says and does. What He teaches rings true to the way people intuitively know things ought to be. As He speaks, the effect is unlike anything the people have ever experienced. “And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29). The people are staggered by the things coming out of His mouth. They are saying things like, “No man ever spoke like this Man!” (John 7:46). The truth of Christ is not an arbitrary set of propositions. It is love applied to all levels of life. The authority He exercises is not an arbitrary exertion of will “over” others, but the innate moral authority of love. But the Sermon on the Mount isn’t sinking into their understanding so easily. More teaching needs to be done, because the power-over-others orientation is deeply ingrained in human nature. Just watch these guys and their mom in action: Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from Him. And He said to her, “What do you wish?” She said to Him, “Grant that these two sons of mine may sit,

one on Your right hand and the other on the left, in Your kingdom.” But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They said to Him, “We are able.” So He said to them, “You will indeed drink My cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by My Father.” And when the ten heard it, they were greatly displeased with the two brothers. Matthew 20:20-24 Oh my! Now what? Well, now Jesus explicitly repudiates the top-down system of the world, hearkening back to His pre-incarnate plea with ancient Israel to refrain from adopting monarchy: But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles LORD it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Matthew 20:25-28 This is amazing! Jesus is launching the ultimate counter-narrative to the common story of dominance and violence we humans tell ourselves over and over again. He does not present Himself as merely more powerful than all the other kings of history, but rather as operating by an entirely different kind of power. The basic orientation of the world is toward power over others. Jesus comes along and establishes a power-under-others dynamic. He’s not even suggesting a modified version of the prevailing system. He just explicitly says, “It shall not be so among you.” What, precisely, shall not

be so among the followers of Jesus? People exercising authority over one another, that’s what! With the words, “It shall not be so among you,” Jesus was establishing an alternative system to the one the world commonly employs. His church was to be a new world planted within the old world, a parallel social order operating alongside and in contrast to the prevailing order. By establishing His church, Jesus is essentially saying, Here is how the whole world ought to operate and ultimately will operate when things are finally back the way God intends them to be. Directly after Jesus repudiated the rule-over-others system, He engaged in an act of subversive theater. Knowing that the people were eager for Him to be crowned king of Israel and conquer the Romans, Jesus tells His disciples to go to a particular village and “find a donkey.” What? Maybe He means a stallion? A war horse rippling with muscles would be more fitting for the occasion. But, no, He is rather specific. He wants a donkey. Bewildered, they do as He says. Once the comical beast is brought to Him, Jesus does something so against the grain of “normal” that the point cannot be missed. He mounts the donkey and rides into Jerusalem as a mock king. He tells His disciples to announce Him with the words, “Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey” (Matthew 21:1-11). It’s not meant to be funny. It’s meant to be a theatrical rebuke to the messianic expectation of Israel and to the entire world system. At this point, pretty much every person is scratching their head and trying to figure out what He’s up to. All they’ve ever known is the Gentile system of top-down authority. His actions are making everybody nervous, especially the ruling class of Israel—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Scribes. They have “taught” the people to know their

place, and their place is beneath their leaders. Now they have a fella on their hands who is obviously more powerful than they are in every way, and He just rode into Jerusalem on a donkey of all things. The message is clear: your entire structure is wrong at the foundational level, and it’s coming down. Jesus is clearly denouncing the core principle they depend on for their elevated status “over” the people. He is, with shocking boldness, overturning the system that props them up.

GREATNESS REDEFINED After making a mockery of monarchy with His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, Jesus proceeds quite logically, as a follow-up, to offer an open critique of Israel’s supposed leadership: They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, “Rabbi, Rabbi.” But you, do not be called “Rabbi”; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ. But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Matthew 23:6-12 Jesus is rather pointed about all of this above-and-below business that goes on among God’s people. The “leaders” of Israel had created a system in which they were generally perceived by the Jewish people as occupying positions of elevated status “over them,” just like the Gentiles operated. The structure was set up so that teachers and preachers would end up in “the best places” and in “the best seats.” Titles of prestige were employed, but more than employed, those titles were invested with hierarchical sentiments that are antithetical to God’s covenant purpose. A sharp dichotomy between clergy and laity was established. The people of God were led to imagine themselves to be under the authority of their religious leaders, rather than under their discipleship. According to God’s covenant system, spiritual leaders were supposed to teach the people to know God for themselves. But the system was designed to stunt the spiritual growth of the people and keep them dependent upon their leaders for access to God.

How does Christ deal with all this abuse of power? He simply sweeps it aside as contrary to God’s covenant plan. But Jesus goes a step further. He doesn’t merely condemn top-down power dynamics, nor does He just declare how He wants things to operate in His kingdom, as if He simply has a preferred leadership style among multiple legit options. Rather, He explains that the way He wants things to operate is grounded in a principle that undergirds reality itself: “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” There is nothing arbitrary about this. Jesus isn’t saying, If you exalt yourself, I’m going to knock you down. If you behave as I say, I’ll give you a promotion and a pay raise. Rather, Jesus is describing the intrinsic manner in which relational dynamics between free agents actually happen. We are rational, emotional, volitional creatures, created in the image of God, each equipped with the dignity of free will and granted the privilege of direct access to God. As such, there are laws that operate within social dynamics, just as there are laws that operate within the realm of physics. When one free agent senses in another free agent an effort to control others, trust shuts down. Conversely, when one free agent senses in another free agent a humble expenditure of self for the good of others, trust opens up. Selfishness leads to mistrust, isolation, and the disintegration of relationships. Self-giving service leads to trust, connection, and the strengthening of relationships. This is simply the way reality operates. And the reason reality operates this way is because it was designed by a God who, within the parameters of God’s own reality, operates like this. God is, by definition, three equals who operate as one. Love, not power, actuates the relationship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, God engineered humanity to operate in like manner. The image of God is most accurately reflected when human beings exist with one another in a state of egalitarian love. Having rejected the Gentile way of “authority over” others, and having denounced the Jewish leaders for adopting that faulty system, Jesus proceeds to pronounce a series of “woes” against the religious

establishment. The whole system, He declares, has been reduced to a religious scam. It will, therefore, implode on itself. He calls the religious leaders “hypocrites”—pretenders, actors, fakes—who have “shut up the kingdom of heaven against men.” They are in it for the money, Jesus says. They “devour widow’s houses.” While they pray long prayers and go through the temple rituals, really all they are in it for is “extortion and self-indulgence.” They have discovered that religion can be exploited as a lucrative business, and they are milking it for all it’s worth. They have manipulated themselves into exalted religious positions for the material gain that comes with the hypocritical act (Matthew 23:13-36). After giving His scathing public denunciation of Israel’s leadership, Jesus then prophesies over Jerusalem: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate. Matthew 23:37-38 Israel is headed straight for disaster, but they are blind to their inevitable fate. From their perspective, the Roman Empire is the problem and what they need is a powerful messiah who can marshal an army against their oppressors. The truth is, this way of thinking is itself the problem. They have trained themselves to trust in brute strength. As the prophet Isaiah said regarding Israel’s pursuit of power, “The act of violence is in their hands . . . . The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways; they have made themselves crooked paths; whoever takes that way shall not know peace” (Isaiah 59:6, 8, NIV). For generations, Israel had existed in the world under the rule of their own kings, until bigger, more powerful kingdoms came along. That’s how power works. There’s always a bigger, more brutal fish in the pond. “He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword” (Revelation 13:10). Monarchical power is, by its very nature, an endless cycle of violence. Everyone who operates by this system will suffer the losses the system exacts. It is an absolute impossibility for violence to produce peace. The powerful

always want more power and the weak always want revenge. And so the cycle of violence and retaliatory vengeance goes on and on and on. As Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, He warns the people that if they continue operating by the power dynamics of the Gentile nations, they will eventually be crushed by the superior power of their Roman rulers (Luke 19:41-44). And that’s exactly what happened. When Jesus did not become the military messiah Israel wanted, unrest under the Roman yoke finally boiled over in a series of violent Jewish revolts. Fed up with the puny muscle-flexing of the Jews, the Roman armies moved in and destroyed the city of Jerusalem in AD 70, just as Jesus predicted. In short, the power dynamics of the world do not work. Exercising power over others can never produce sustainable peace, for the simple reason that human nature is made for the dignity of freedom and selfgovernance. Those who try to control others can expect eventual rebellion. All coercive power structures inevitably come crashing down.

GOD IN AN APRON After His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem as Israel’s parody king—with absolutely no intention of occupying a throne and raising an army— Jesus gives His disciples a demonstration of the kind of king He will be. Gathered with His disciples for the Passover meal, Christ proceeds to act out the essence of His kingdom. He “rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded” (John 13:4-5). God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, wearing an apron and washing dirty feet! A more disorienting and delightful picture of omnipotence is inconceivable. Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, “LORD, are You washing my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.” Peter said to

Him, “You shall never wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” Simon Peter said to Him, “LORD, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!” John 13:6-9 Peter finds it impossible to envision God in the position of a humble servant. He cannot accept that the person who occupies the highest position—the Master, the Messiah, God in the flesh—would occupy the lowest position. Jesus knows how distorted Peter’s thinking is regarding the character of God. “You do not understand now,” He tells Peter, “but you will know after this.” Clearly, Jesus anticipates that Peter’s mind will have to undergo a radical paradigm shift if Peter is to be a part of the eternal kingdom of God. What Jesus is doing here is so counterintuitive to the egocentric human heart that it challenges the very foundation of our being. Peter imagines he is elevating Jesus and complimenting Him when he says, “You shall never wash my feet!” But, in fact, his refusal to be served by Christ is an insult to the character of God. Notice, Jesus doesn’t say, If you don’t serve Me, you can’t be a part of My kingdom. That would make total sense. Rather, He says, If you don’t let Me serve you, you can’t be a part of My kingdom. In other words, If you don’t want to be part of a governing system in which the king is the greatest servant, then My kingdom is not for you. If you don’t completely shift your perspective on what it looks like to be powerful, truly powerful with the power of down-going love, you can’t be part of My new kingdom. Of course, Peter yields and allows Jesus to wash his feet, not because he comprehends it, but because he cannot accept exclusion from the kingdom of Jesus. So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and LORD, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your LORD and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. John 13:12-17

By girding Himself with an apron and performing the most menial task within that culture, Jesus was putting in place a general principle of conduct. Foot washing is simply indicative of the posture His followers are called upon to take in all relational dynamics. Jesus was not suggesting that we simply act the part of a humble servant by engaging in an occasional foot washing ritual, but, rather, that we allow the foot washing service to be a constant reminder of how we are to conduct ourselves all the time, in all relationships. Jesus was establishing a radically different way for human beings to exist in relation to one another, based, astonishingly, on how God exists. Nor was Jesus merely playing a part in the moment in order to show them how they ought to be. He was showing them how He is, as God, in His own character. In Luke’s Gospel, we have a picture of Christ, the LORD and Master of all, wearing an apron and serving the redeemed in eternity future. Jesus tells the disciples, speaking in the third person of Himself, “Assuredly, I say to you that He will gird Himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37). When the heavens and the earth shall be made new, we will find ourselves sitting down to eat while the Creator of the universe waits on us as our servant.

THE CRUCIFIXION OF COERCIVE POWER Every step of the way throughout His ministry, Jesus has been baffling the expectations of the people. He clearly possesses a magnitude of power they have never encountered before. But strangely enough, He will not use it in the way they want. It is clear, as well, that He has taken upon Himself the title of king, and yet, He will not act out the position according to the prevailing script of kings. In fact, He takes the prevailing script of kings straight to the cross and crucifies it once and for all. Now Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus said to him, “It is as you say.” Matthew 27:11

And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Matthew 27:28-29 And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. Matthew 27:37 Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. Matthew 27:41-42 An irony of cosmic significance is on full display here. Jesus most certainly could have saved Himself, but He simply chose not to. On the cross, hanging naked, bleeding, and crowned with thorns, He is the king of the universe. And yet, He is a king of an entirely different order than the world has ever known. It is precisely because He refuses to save Himself by overpowering others, that He is qualified for the preeminent position. Unlike every other king before Him, He is infinitely worthy of our adoration for the profoundly confounding reason that He would rather love us to the point of His own demise, than save Himself to our demise. In Christ, we witness the crucifixion of coercive power and the full exercise of the only power powerful enough to conquer evil—the power of self-sacrificing love. He voluntarily laid down His life in order to demonstrate that love alone is worthy to govern the world. But that’s not the end of the story. Having achieved this most monumental of all victories, Christ now entrusts His disciples with the task of building an alternative community, a new Israel, in which the principles of His covenantal love are to be put on display as a witness to the world.

THE COVENANT COMMUNITY When we come to the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus does something remarkable: He invokes the triune relationship between Himself, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, as the signature truth that defines the identity and mission of His church. Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen.” Matthew 28:18-20 First, Jesus makes an astounding claim that seems, at first glance, to be odd, considering the fact that He is God in the flesh. Jesus says that “all authority” is now in His possession? What does this mean? Did He not, as God, always possess “all authority”? In what sense could God acquire more authority than He already has? What is this authority that Christ has acquired? And by what means did He acquire it? Well, as usual, there is a backstory here, and Christ Himself is the climactic point of the story. Nothing in the New Testament—literally nothing—is happening that is not the outworking of the Old Testament narrative. Any interpretation of a New Testament passage that does not draw its meaning from the Old Testament is deficient at best and completely off-base at worst. So, as we might confidently expect, the backstory tells us exactly what this “authority” is that Jesus has now been “given.”

God created Adam in His “own image,” as the original “son of God,” to whom, along with Eve, God gave “dominion” over the earth, with the expectation that they would govern the world in God’s image (Genesis 1:27-28; Luke 3:38). But Adam forfeited his sonship position and with it his authority over the earth. By falling into sin, Adam transferred his earthly dominion to an invading enemy. Satan became “the ruler of this world” (Genesis 3:1-5; John 12:31). The fall of humanity was a moral fall resulting in a governmental fall. A transfer of authority took place. Once under Satan’s dominion, human beings began to govern the world in the image of their new ruler, or by his principles: self-exaltation and deception, force and violence, monarchy and military conquest. “All the nations” of the world became hierarchical domination structures, or covenant-breaking systems, bent on oppression and exploitation by means of power dynamics that are contrary to the covenantal character of God. God then called a man out of the satanic world system in order to reestablish His original plan, which had been derailed by Adam and Eve. Through the lineage of Abraham, a new nation was founded. Through Moses, the nation of Israel was established under the stipulations of God’s covenantal law, covering all areas of life, summarized as love to God and neighbor. The nation of Israel repeatedly vowed to be faithful to the covenant and repeatedly rebelled, choosing rather to pander after the ways of the other nations. But throughout the history of Israel’s covenant failure, the prophets foretold the coming of a messiah who would accomplish God’s original plan, keep covenant, and reacquire the dominion lost by Adam. Against this backstory, it is evident that the “authority” acquired by Christ is the very authority lost by Adam and subsequently refused by Israel. In the person of Christ—the Son of God, the second Adam, new Israel—dominion over the earth was regained. Precisely how He won back the earth from satanic dominion is equally clear. He did so by living and dying in complete covenantal faithfulness to God and to humanity. The moment He died on the cross without yielding to the impulse to save Himself to the demise of others, Satan’s kingdom was conquered, and the earth was secured as the eternal home of redeemed humanity. His voluntary death of self-sacrificing love constitutes His victory, in

principle, over all systems of coercion and violence. Jesus conquered the sheer power of force by the sheer power of love. A new kind of king now occupies the throne. This is the story into which we are inducted by baptism, according to Jesus! “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth,” He says. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” By invoking, as the premise of the gospel commission, the authority He has acquired by His life and death, Jesus is sending forth His followers to invite “all nations” into the essential substance of His victory. He won the war against evil by the superior power of love, and now He is inviting every human being to live out the implications of His love. The victory Jesus gained by His covenantally faithful life and death must now be gained within individual human lives, transcending all national borders and interests. It is with the authority of non-coercive love that Jesus has deployed His followers to make disciples of all nations. The gospel commission isn’t merely a quest to get people to accept Jesus as their personal Savior so they can go to heaven when He comes again. It also entails the task of composing a “kingdom” here and now, called the “church,” built on an entirely different foundation than the world has to offer—a foundation of love rather than power. And it is precisely here, in this narrative context, that Jesus tells His disciples that all who embrace the gospel are to be baptized in the threefold “name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” But why? Why is the three-fold name the door of entrance to the new kingdom? Well, the answer is obvious, isn’t it, now that we have contemplated the teachings of Jesus and the revolutionary nature of His kingdom?

The doctrine of the Trinity reveals God as a fellowship of self-giving love, not a top-down authority system. Each believer is baptized in the three-fold name in order that the church might be a fellowship of equals, not a political power structure married to any national identity. The church is not to be vassal to any state, but rather is to exist in the world as a transnational revolution of nonviolence, enemy-love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The love that defines God’s own covenantal reality within the Trinity is to define the fellowship of the church. It logically follows, then, that the gospel commission is to be executed on a trinitarian premise, which is precisely what Jesus says. In Scripture, the word “name” refers to the character or function of a person, place, or thing. Father, Son, and Spirit compose a social circle of self-giving fellowship. The love that exists between them is “the name,” or the character, “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” When we are baptized, we are baptized into their love, into the way they relate to one another. To be baptized is to be incorporated into the fellowship that exists between the members of the Heavenly Trio. What, then, is the gospel commission? When Jesus tells us to “go” and “make disciples of all the nations,” what is it, exactly, that we are discipling them into? The answer, according to Jesus, is that we are calling people from all nations out of the world’s prevailing governing system into the governing system of Christ, out of one way of being human into another way of being human, out of power dynamics into love dynamics. Jesus died the covenant death of self-sacrificing love on the cross and rose from the grave to the right hand of the Father as the victorious Son of God in Adam’s place. We are baptized into His death and risen to new life in His victory, thus pledging ourselves to follow the way of love over the way of power. The way all the nations of the world operate is by the exertion of power over one another, by political maneuvering and machinations, by force and military conquest. The world dictates that the strong prevail over the weak. Survival of the fittest is the rule. Competition, one-upmanship, rule or ruin, backroom strategies, and

backstabbing schemes—these are the ways of the world. All of this was precisely what God called Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Israel out of, in order to form a different people who operate by a different governing principle called “covenant.” What is covenant? Covenant is relational integrity based on loving God supremely and loving others as one’s self. Covenant is the transformative principle that God sought to put on display through Israel, as a “kingdom of priests” to “all the nations.” Covenant is the law of love that was to constitute Israel’s witness to the world. The covenant God made with Israel constitutes the essence of the gospel commission Christ gave to His church. Jesus came to the world to fulfill Israel’s covenant calling, to be the “Son of God” that Israel was meant to be, and to establish His church as God’s new covenant community in the world, commissioned with the task of inviting “all the nations” into covenant fellowship with God. Christ and His church are God’s new covenant people, or Israel reconstituted on the premise of the victory Christ achieved over the world. Once this single idea is understood, we understand the whole point of the Bible. But if this narrative plot line is not understood and is not held central to our theological endeavors, we will tend to interpret individual Bible verses in a vacuum of perspective. We will manufacture ideas that are foreign to the actual story of the book, isolating biblical language from its context and extracting “meaning” that is not there. This is precisely what has happened down through church history with the various efforts to interpret the Sonship of Christ in ways that render Him a created or a birthed deity. Sabellius, Arius, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Oneness Pentecostalism, Unitarianism, some of the early Advent pioneers, and the current anti-trinitarian advocates

pressing in around the edges of Adventism—all define the Sonship of Christ without regard for the Old Testament narrative from which the sonship language is actually derived. As a result, the misguided obsession with the ancient metaphysical origins of Jesus completely misses the grand narrative arc of Scripture and fails to grasp the whole point of the gospel commission. The New Testament does not call Jesus “the Son of God” in an effort to inform us regarding His ancient metaphysical origins as a lesser god brought into existence by the one true God. No such story is told in Scripture. The Bible is not a Greek text probing Greek questions. It is a Hebrew text probing Hebrew questions. It is not a metaphysical philosophy, but rather a covenant narrative. We need not guess what the New Testament means when it introduces Jesus as the “Son of God,” because the Old Testament tells us exactly what it means. Jesus is the Son of God in the sense that He has come to the world to occupy Adam’s vacated position and give humanity a new beginning. Within that same narrative flow, He is the covenantal Son of God that Israel was called to be. In His messianic ministry, • Jesus fulfilled all the covenant promises and prophecies that had been articulated by Moses and the prophets, • He tore down every manmade system contrary to the covenant ideal, • and He established a new Israel called “the church.” Within this rather specific narrative flow, the identity and mission of the church become crystal clear. The church is God’s covenant community on earth, charged with the task of preaching the covenant faithfulness of God to all of humanity in Christ. Pointing to Jesus as the fulfillment of all God’s promises to the world, the church is to preach the principles of covenantal love and invite all peoples—of whatever nation, ethnicity, or language—into God’s new Israel. God’s new covenant with His new Israel is more than a theological concept. It is an organizing principle that gives a specific shape to all relationships on all levels: family relations, economic relations, political relations, ecological relations. The

church is the covenant community in which those principles are to be put into practice as a demonstration to the onlooking world. The way God’s church does marriage, child raising, education, business, financial stewardship, agriculture, conflict resolution, healthcare—literally every aspect of life—is to be a testimony to the power of God’s love to create flourishing and sustainable relational dynamics. This is what Jesus meant when He said: A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:34-35 Ellen White understood the covenant calling of the church. Notice the following statements, in which I have bolded key points: The church is the repository of the riches of the grace of Christ; and through the church will eventually be made manifest, even to “the principalities and powers in heavenly places,” the final and full display of the love of God. The Acts of the Apostles, p. 9 The church was to be a divine inclosure in the world. It was to be as a vineyard planted by the divine Husbandman, and brought under cultivation by Him. It was to be as a nursery planted with trees of righteousness, and although surrounded by evil trees of the world, which brought forth fruit unto death, yet all within the inclosure was designed to be the planting of the LORD, bearing fruit unto righteousness. The followers of Christ were to reveal the power of the transforming grace of Christ to change the corrupt hearts of men . . . . They were to represent to the world the character of Christ, and keep before the world a representation of the eternal world; for among them was to be found the spirit, the character, that should be developed by coming under the control of the divine government. They were to be obedient to higher laws than the princes of this world originate, and yield submission to a greater power than kings can command . . . .

While all the world is under the care of God, and angels are commissioned to do service in all parts of it, yet the church is the special object of God’s love and care. In the church, He is making experiments of mercy and love, and drawing men to Himself. Through the grace of Christ an amazing transformation is taking place in the corrupt hearts of men. Review and Herald, December 19, 1893 Through the ages of moral darkness, through centuries of strife and persecution, the church of Christ has been as a city set on a hill. From age to age, through successive generations, to the present time, the pure doctrines of the Bible have been unfolding within her borders. The church of Christ, enfeebled and defective as she may appear, is the one object on earth on which he bestows in a special sense His love and regard. The church is the theater of His grace, in which he delights to make experiments of mercy on human hearts. The church is God’s fortress, His city of refuge, which He holds in a revolted world. Any betrayal of her sacred trust is treachery to Him who has bought her with the precious blood of His only begotten Son. In the past, faithful souls have constituted the church on earth, and God has taken them into covenant relation with Himself, uniting the church on earth with the church in heaven. Review and Herald, December 4, 1900 1. The church is called out of the world into “covenant relation” with God. 2. The church is a “fortress,” a “city on a hill,” a divine “inclosure in the world,” an alternative “government” that is to operate by “higher laws” than the world can enforce and a “greater power than kings can command.” 3. The church is “the theater” of God’s “grace.” It is a kind of laboratory in which God is performing “experiments of mercy.” What happens to human beings when they are loved unconditionally by God and by one another? The church is the community in which that experiment is to be conducted.

4. The church exists for the purpose of giving to the world “the final and full display of the love of God.” What an astounding mission! What a high calling! What a wonderful privilege it is to be God’s church in the world!

THE INTIMATE INNER CIRCLE Our baptism into the three-fold name of God not only defines our calling and mission here and now, it also points to our eternal destiny. A beautiful communal love lies at the center of reality, and we are invited in. In fact, one of us is already there, awaiting our arrival. An actual member of the human race has been grafted into the Trinity. Our Brother in the flesh is presently there, as one of us, within the intimate inner circle of God. Here is one of the great wonders of the gospel: in the person of Christ we have before us the hypostatic union. Divinity and humanity are married in one individual. After Jesus had been crucified and was raised from the dead, He appeared to His disciples as much human as He was before His death, and as much divine as He was before His incarnation. They thought He must be a disembodied spirit and were terrified. To convince them of His fleshly nature, He said, “Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). Still, they were having a hard time believing that He was standing right there with them in the flesh. So “He said to them, ‘Have you any food here?’ So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. And He took it and ate in their presence” (verses 41-43).

The apostle Paul would later inform us that the risen Christ has “a glorious body” of the same kind we will have in the new heavens and new earth (Philippians 3:21). Jesus is still our brother in the flesh, even after His resurrection and ascension. “He is not ashamed to call [us] brethren” (Hebrews 2:11). But He isn’t merely one of us, He is the representative head of the corporate human race. He is our new Adam. So when we think of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, we are to understand that the whole human race is represented in Him. Looking at the death of Christ, Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Speaking of His resurrection and ascension, the apostle says, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6-7, NIV). Right now, one of us—a member of the human race—is fellowshipping within the intimate inner circle of the triune God. His human name is Jesus, the Adamic Son of God, and He is our eternal brother in the flesh. He just happens to also be one of the members of the Trinity. Divinity is forever enshrined within humanity, and humanity is forever enthroned within divinity. God and man are forever one corporate union in Christ. Should we not hurry up and run to Him, where He is, in the heavenly realm, awaiting our arrival? Jesus is already there on the other side of this dark night of suffering and shame. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to be there with Him. Imagine the scene. We’re all seated at His table, the redeemed of all ages. There’s rebellious Adam and deceived Eve. They look a little reluctant to interact, and yet so humbly happy to be there. Over there is the cowardly Abraham who said his wife was his sister to save his hide, the one called “the friend of God” against all odds.

There’s the doubting Sarah, too, who laughed at God’s promise and then named her son “Funny” as a nod to the hilarity of giving birth as an elderly woman. And there’s Funny himself, the recipient of the dysfunctional dad award, Isaac, along with the ingeniously manipulative Rebecca. Deceptive Jacob is there, too, looking like he can’t believe it, and looking for Leah and Rachel to sort some things out. And there’s the dastardly David, called “a man after God’s own heart” in some sense that only grace can understand and justify. Believe it or not, the megalomaniac Nebuchadnezzar is there, too, seated next to those Jewish boys he tried to incinerate in his fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. There’s loudmouth Peter and the hotheaded brothers, James and John. Mary the prostitute is there, too, because nobody could stop her, not even Simon, the judgmental Pharisee, who is also there, astoundingly. The self-righteous Paul looks a bit nervous sitting across from Stephen, but there they are. You’re there, too, believe it or not, and so am I, which is equally unbelievable. There we are, a vast assembly of sinners saved by grace. Smiles are on all faces as we sit there dumbfounded by the fact that any of us made it. A sense of anticipation fills the air. We’re about to have the feast of our lives, and everybody’s hungry in a whole new way. “Here comes the food,” Isaac exclaims with excitement. “Calm down, Isaac,” Rebecca says, “it’s going to be a vegetarian meal.”

We all turn our heads to see the servers approaching, girded with aprons, platters covered with delectable delights balanced neck-high on their palms. “This is gonna be great,” Peter yells, as the crowd responds with laughter and shouts of joy. But then, as the servers come closer, suddenly, to our utter amazement, we see that the lead server is the LORD Jesus Christ Himself. A hush of silence overtakes us. Tears begin to flood our eyes. It just doesn’t seem right that He is the server and we are the served. And yet we sense that this is the most right thing we’ve ever known. He stops in response to our silence, His smiling eyes passing over us as if to ask, “Is something wrong?” “Well, what kind of party is this? It’s time to eat, everybody,” He announces with a grin as He begins placing plates of delicious food before each of us. The truth washes over us with a beauty so glorious it nearly defies belief. This is our king, in an apron, serving us. This, to our eternal astonishment, is God.