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 anti-trinitarian, 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 anti-trinitarian 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 anti-trinitarian 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
