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.
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