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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 anti-trinitarian 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 anti-trinitarian 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 anti-trinitarian 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 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 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 pre-creation 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 9-10

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.