KASPARS OZOLINS | Assistant Professor, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
At times, we all ought to wisely stop rushing through our busy lives and ponder an important question, “What on earth am I here for?” It’s a sensible, rational, and reasonable question to ask. As Christian apologist Ray Comfort has often quipped: “We know how to put a man on the moon, but we don’t know why we’ve been put on the earth in the first place.” While the modern West seems incapable of answering this question, we can readily find the answer in God’s Word. Paul declares in words full of mystery that all things were created by the Son, “in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). With these words we ponder the unfathomable thought that everything, including our very existence as human beings, has one purpose and end––the Son. You and I were made for the Son. No wonder those who reject this reality, or otherwise fail to appreciate it, are lost! How could humans live utterly contrary to the purpose for which they were created, and not eventually go mad searching for any possible meaning to their existence?
One of the most famous passages in all of Scripture is the second psalm, describing the futile struggle of nations and people and kings to take down God and his Messiah. It depicts what sinful humanity has always tried to do when it rejects God’s revelation and tries to actually take the place of God Himself. Sometimes this struggle is violent (as it was in the days of Christ), sometimes it is more intellectual and doctrinal. But at the root of it all is unredeemed mankind’s basic state of unbelief and pride.
While an explicit form of unbelief is the norm in the modern West today, it takes far more work to discern a more subtle form of unbelief that is lurking in false religious movements. For while it may be clear as day that the secular world rejects the claims of Jesus Christ outright, the same can hardly be said of groups like Seventh-day Adventism, which emphatically profess to honor God. When one compares biblical Christianity with Adventism, however, I believe that the inescapable conclusion to be drawn is that Adventism as a movement does not reallybelieve that the glory of God is of the greatest worth. The rejection of the glory of God in Adventism becomes as much a form of unbelief as the kind of unbelief one experiences in the secular world. At the end of the day, unbelief, whether explicit or hidden, remains unbelief, and is not pleasing to God, nor can it ultimately satisfy the human heart.
Adventism has a conception of God, to be sure, but it is not the biblical conception. In fact, upon closer examination, it turns out to radically undermine a foundational Christian understanding of our triune God. The thesis of this blog post is to demonstrate that Seventh-day Adventism (whether “traditional” or what may be called neo-Adventism) undermines a critical aspect of God as He has revealed himself to us—the eternal Sonship of Christ. In so doing, it distorts the biblical relationship between mankind and God by exalting man and diminishing the Son. In the end, Adventism demonstrates that it is a movement that actually ends up subverting the glory of God.
Thinking about the titles of Christ
One of the most fruitful areas of biblical study one can engage in is to gain a deeper understanding of the many titles of Christ, which express the multi-faceted nature of his person and work. This is ironic because we hear these titles so often that we too often don’t stop to think about them. For example, the words Jesus Christ are universally known, sometimes adored, sometimes uttered as an expletive, but rarely understood, even by Christians. We can too easily fail to appreciate the deep significance of that title Christ (which is not his last name!). It is the Greek term for one who is anointed with oil, and a translation of the Hebrew original: Messiah. Notably, only priests, prophets, and kings were anointed in Old Testament times. Christ is the ultimate representative of each of these three offices. So every time you read the word Christ in the New Testament, all of that rich meaning is being conveyed in a single syllable.
For the purposes of this article, I want to examine two important titles for Jesus of Nazareth: “son of God” and “son of man.” Both are familiar to us, but as with the title Christ, both are often misunderstood or simply glossed over.
Son of Man
A simple search of the New Testament reveals that the title “Son of God” occurs 43 times, while the title “Son of man” occurs 86 times. This distribution is fascinating, and perhaps surprising to us because we usually speak of Jesus Christ as the “Son of God” but rarely use the title “Son of man.” In fact, this was also true of other people in New Testament times when they spoke of Christ. Consequently it is amazing that the preferred title that Jesus himself used was none other than “Son of man.”
This preference for the title “Son of man” should clue us in that there is something special about this designation that goes beyond the mere idea of someone being a human being. In fact, the probable source of this title is the monumental vision Daniel saw in which a succession of four beasts was followed by the Ancient of Days, to whom “one like a son of man” came. This one was given “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:14).
What is the incredible conclusion of this vision? That one day, there will come a human being, equal in status with God himself, who will rule forever over the entire world.
What is the incredible conclusion of this vision? That one day, there will come a human being, equal in status with God himself, who will rule forever over the entire world. Thus, “Son of man” turns out to be a designation about the status of Christ: although a human, he is equal to God. Amazingly, the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, a singular event without parallel in human history, was already predicted in the Old Testament (in Daniel, and also elsewhere).
Son of God
The significance of the second title, “Son of God,” is equally important to grasp. Language about the sonship of Christ goes to the very heart of a Christian understanding of the Trinity. And the Trinity is at the very core of our faith, absolutely central to how we understand God and how we understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Have you ever pondered why Christians confess that there is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Could there be something inherent to these terms that might tell us more about the very being of God?
When we think about God the Son and God the Father in particular, we should not think of “Son” and “Father” as mere linguistic placeholders for two divine persons. Rather, it is significant that the New Testament defaults to calling God as “Father” and Jesus Christ as “Son.” But what sort of significance is this? We could construe the Father-Son relationship in various ways, of course. It could be a relationship of authority (the Father being supreme over the Son). It could be a relationship of likeness (namely that the Son resembles the Father in some way). Or it could be a genetic relationship (namely, that the Son is some kind of physical offspring from the Father).
All of these will be examined in turn, as we try to understand what Christians have traditionally confessed about the Father and the Son since the earliest days of the church. We tread very carefully here, because these analogies have often been made distortions of how the Son actually relates to the Father.
A relationship of authority
With respect to authority, it is undeniable that the New Testament clearly states that the Father sends the Son, and the Son in His human nature obeys God the Father perfectly:
- Luke 22:42: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
- John 3:16–17: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
- John 6:38: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”
- Philippians 2:5–8: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
- Hebrews 10:7: “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”
But even in these passages, we see that the Son, although sent by the Father, is nevertheless equal to God. We further see that while the Son obeys the Father, it is only according to His humanity. So whenever we speak of the obedience of Jesus Christ, we should never diminish the fundamental truth that all of creation owes its existence to God the Son and will one day worship Him. There is one core ontological divison in reality: the Creator-creature distinction. And Jesus Christ has always been squarely on the Creator side of that equation. On almost every page of the New Testament, we find abundant evidence––even in statements that could sound like throwaway phrases—that Jesus Christ is God himself. (Think, for example, of Paul’s emotional farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, where he charges them to take care of the church of God, “which he obtained with his own blood.”)
A relationship of likeness
It’s a cliché that is absolutely true: sons resemble their fathers. This is important for our understanding of who the Son is. Isaiah, along with other Old Testament prophets, emphatically repeats a critical truth about God: he is utterly incomparable and unique. There is nothing in creation like God, nor could there ever be. In Isaiah 46, the prophet proclaims what God says of himself rhetorically: “To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?” Later he reiterates: “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.” In light of this, it is stupefying to ponder the claim of the author of Hebrews that the Son is the image of the invisble God, or the words of Paul, who declares in Colossians that Christ is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”
Jesus Christ is not some upstart god, a Johnny-come-lately savior. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, come to die for the sins of His people in order to rescue them from death.
In fact, this likeness is so pervasive and so fundamental that we note carefully God’s declaration concerning Himself already in the Old Testament: “I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior” (Isaiah 43:11). Jesus Christ is not some upstart god, a Johnny-come-lately savior. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, come to die for the sins of His people in order to rescue them from death. The likeness between the Son and the Father is not physical, since God is spirit and not body. It is beyond physical, and far deeper. It is a bedrock ontological reality. Hence, to say that Jesus Christ is the Son of the incomparable God is to automatically equate Him with God:
- Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
- John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
- John 14:9: “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.’”
- John 5:19: “Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’”
A relationship of origin
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the Father-Son language expresses something deeply mysterious about intra-Trinitarian relations. No, this is not a coarse human genetic or sexual analogy. It is not something borrowed from Greek pagan religion, as so many Adventists allege. Rather, the historic doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son (as it is called) is designed to maintain the astonishing equality and likeness between the Father and Son (that we have seen) by explaining that the Son eternally and necessarily proceeds from the Father. This is not some kind of secondary, inferior act; on the contrary, it is something fundamental to the very nature of God: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man” (John 5:26–27).
At this point I would like to provide a bit of autobiographical context. Back in 2016, conservative evangelicalism was embroiled in a series of online disputes over the fairly widespread doctrine that the Son is eternally and functionally subordinate to the Father (sometimes abbreviated as EFS: Eternal Functional Subordination). Many evangelicals found the old doctrine of eternal generation to be somewhat odd and confusing and viewed EFS as a more desirable alternative. For example, respected theologian Wayne Grudem captured a common sentiment in his open question: “But just what is meant by ‘eternal generation’? In what [Goligher and Trueman] have written, I cannot discover what they mean. To substitute the words ‘paternity’ and ‘filiation’ provides some Latinized terminology but those terms simply mean ‘existing as a father’ and ‘existing as a son,’ which tells us nothing more.”
In place of eternal generation, a popular proposal was to say that the Father-Son language in the New Testament expressed relations of authority and submission.
In place of eternal generation, a popular proposal was to say that the Father-Son language in the New Testament expressed relations of authority and submission. After all, sons are meant to be obedient to their fathers, and so perhaps we are to understand God the Son as eternally obedient and subordinate to the Father (yet not in such a way as to deny his own authority and deity). When theologians like Wayne Grudem read older classic Christian authors who spoke of a subordination, or “order” within the Trinity, they inferred that these authors were speaking about matters of intra-Trinitarian authority and obedience.
My own context is relevant here, as I had recently become a believer (in 2013) and had just left Adventism, after a long agonizing internal debate about what to do. As I came to this debate, I realized that the doctrine of eternal generation was the only way to safeguard the unity of the divine persons, and yet also to distinguish them. Unless we affirm that the Son necessarily, and eternally proceeds from the Father, we end up leaving the door open for future Trinitarian heresies that I was all-too familiar with as a former Adventist: Arianism and tritheism.
In the remainder of this blog post, I want to show how historic Adventism (with its Arianism) and current mainstream Adventism (with its tritheism) both undermine the Sonship of Christ, thereby robbing God of his rightful glory.
Adventism’s deadly Arian roots
Earlier, I hinted that the New Testament’s Father-Son language can be twisted by false teachers in perverse ways. Indeed, this has been done throughout church history. Most famously, the ancient church leader Arius stated: “If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not.” The church would deal with the consequences of this deadly teaching for the next several decades, which spread like wildfire. Things got so bad that it would take an Athanasius contra mundum, standing against what seemed like a whole Arian world, to push back the darkness. (You can read more about Athanasius here.)
Fast forward over a thousand years to the beginnings of Seventh-day Adventism, and you find an organization that can only be described as flatly anti-Trinitarian and Arian in its theology. Ironically, although Adventists like to boast that Ellen G. White “cured” the church of its Arian malaise, in fact there are clear statements from her that squarely disprove this assertion:
“Lucifer in heaven, before his rebellion, was a high and exalted angel, next in honor to God’s dear Son. His countenance, like those of the other angels, was mild and expressive of happiness. His forehead was high and broad, showing a powerful intellect. His form was perfect; his bearing noble and majestic. A special light beamed in his countenance and shone around him brighter and more beautiful than around the other angels” —(The Spirit of Prophecy [vol. 1]).
Notice how glowingly White describes Satan, while glossing over the “dear Son.” She continues by claiming that the Father had invested his Son “with authority to command the heavenly host.” Instead of an authority being given to the incarnate Son, White speaks of a “promoted” Son, of whom Satan “was envious and jealous.” This is the very sort of upstart god that the testimony of all of Scripture is vehemently opposed to.
Although White is still upheld as a model for the Seventh-day Adventist church today, her “Trinitarian” statements are no more orthodox than those of her contemporary Uriah Smith, who blasphemously asserted: “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”—(Smith, Looking Unto Jesus, 1898).
Mainstream Adventism’s deadly tritheism
Although Adventist tritheism emerges already in the earliest days of Adventism alongside its Arianism, it is more difficult to distinguish it from the former. In fact, as Adventist author Ty Gibson explains about his recent book, The Heavenly Trio: “the Adventist pioneers held a specific kind of anti-trinitarianism that actually formed the legitimate and foundational concerns that led to the formation of the Trinitarian doctrine of God presently held by the Adventist church.”
In other words, Ty Gibson, far from labelling pioneer Adventist views on the Trinity as blatantly heretical, enthusiastically embraces the fundamental continuity and logical progression between early Adventism and the present-day organization.
Unlike their pioneers, modern-day mainstream Adventism largely accepts the term “Trinity,” yet substitutes its own understanding which is anything but Trinitarian. This is deeply deceptive.
Unlike their pioneers, modern-day mainstream Adventism largely accepts the term “Trinity,” yet substitutes its own understanding which is anything but Trinitarian. This is deeply deceptive. As Christians, we should know that it is not enough to claim that the Son is eternally God, unless one also affirms that the Son is one in essence with the Father. Remember Isaiah’s clarity: only one God, only one Savior—there is no other!
Gibson’s other book The Sonship of Christ (paired with The Heavenly Trio) is remarkably clear about how he understands the New Testament’s Father-Son language. According to him, “Sonship is a human vocation, not a divine one, but a human vocation that God took up on our behalf. The Sonship of Christ is not His inherently divine identity, but His assumed human identity in solidarity with us” (emphasis added).
The consequences of this view are devastating. Gibson shows how far Adventism has essentially robbed Christ of His ontological identity as the Son of God and substituted a “derived” vocational sonship (from humanity, no less!) that is every bit as heretical as Ellen White’s “promoted” sonship because it denies His fundamental divine reality.
Relating to the Son as redeemed sons
Given all this, it is truly remarkable that Scripture teaches us that it is not inherently wrong to speak of humanity as both “son of God” and “son of man.” Yet, crucially, both of these titles apply to us only in a secondary, derivative sense. We are sons of Adam, but “the son of man” of Daniel 7 stands wholly apart from us (though in full solidarity with us). We are also sons of God, but primarily in a redemptive sense, because of the true Son of God who, as the author of Hebrews so mysteriously explains, “had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17). As the contemporary theologian Fred Sanders notes:
“The sonship into which we are adopted as human sons and daughters is a sonship that, in the person of God the Son, goes all the way back into God. What the second person of the Trinity is by nature, the redeemed become by grace: sons. There is a linked chain of sonship that is joined to God on one side and our salvation on the other. The only-begotten Son becomes the incarnate Son and brings about fellowship with adopted sons. The more clearly and surely we confess the eternal begetting of God the Son, the more deeply we will understand our regeneration as adopted sons.”
It is the duty of every Christian to proclaim the true nature of Jesus Christ and to combat any teaching that detracts from what Scripture proclaims about Him. So it is my prayer that we may more fully embrace our identity as redeemed sons of God, adopted by the work of the Son of God. May we exalt Christ, joyfully confessing his lordship. May we “kiss the Son,” taking refuge in him alone (Psalm 2:12). †
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