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 non-relational 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
