Lesson 11: “The Father, the Son, and the Spirit”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson never affirms God Is One nor does it use the word “Trinity”.
- The “Three Members of the Godhead” echo EGWs “Three Worthies of Heaven/Heavenly Trio”.
- Jesus is presented as God’s representative showing us who He is.
Adventism’s “trinity” is one of the organization’s foundational perversions that tries to hide behind acceptable Christian words. The founders were almost all anti-trinitarian and Arian or semi-Arian. They believed that the Trinity was a heretical Catholic doctrine, and even though Ellen White morphed her language about the nature of Christ over the years, and even though James White’s physical God and his notion that the Holy Spirit was an emanating force that came from God to assist humans were eventually reframed, still EGW spoke of the Trinity in terms of three distinct beings.
The organization has always preferred the word “Godhead” to “Trinity”, and it has never endorsed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as One God expressed in three Persons who share substance. Instead, Ellen White wrote about the “heavenly trio” and the “three Worthies of heaven” into the years just before her death.
Adventism has tried to adopt language that deceives members and outsiders about their understanding of the Godhead; they know that this doctrine is a foundational principle that identifies an orthodox denomination from a cultic offshoot.
One God Not Affirmed
In this lesson teaching the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it is significant that the authors never mention Jesus’ words endorsing the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4:
“Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!”—Deuteronomy 6:4 LSB
Jesus affirmed this Shema when a Jewish scribe asked Him what the greatest commandment was:
Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;’”—Mark 12:29 LSB
Jesus, God the Son—the second Person of the Trinity—affirmed that God Is One. Yet Adventists say that God consists of three “Members” of the Godhead, or three separate beings who share a name (like the God-family), a purpose, and a will. They do not represent God as One indivisible Being expressed in three persons. Instead, they affirm a unique Adventist version of the “trinity”: Ellen White’s “heavenly trio”. Her “trio” evolved from her initial anti-trinitarian beliefs adopted from her husband James.
James White the Materialist
In 1846 James White, who came out of the anti-trinitarian movement called The Christian Connexion, wrote a pamphlet entitled The Personality of God in which he defended his anti-trinitarian views and stated that God the Father has a material body. Ellen White adopted her views from her husband (and the rest of the founders).
In his pamphlet James asserted:
What is God? He is material, organized intelligence, possessing both body and parts. Man is in his image. —James White, The Personality of God, 1846, retrieved from https://maranathamedia.com/downloads/library/books/KnowledgeOfGod/Personality of God.pdf
James further argued against an immaterial spirit in humans and insisted that God is not immaterial but physical. Modern Adventism still reflects this foundational skew of reality established by the founders, James and Ellen White, Joseph Bates, and others including J. N.Andrews (for whom the Adventist seminary at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, is named).
Even though Ellen White amended her beliefs over the decades, she never endorsed the classic Christian Trinity which declares One God expressed in three Persons. Instead she adopted a unique “trinity” which is actually a tritheism. Her tritheism continues to support Adventism’s view that man has no immaterial spirit but that humans cease to exist when they die. This belief includes the Lord Jesus who, EGW stated, did NOT go into Paradise in the presence of the Father on the day He died. He lay in the grave until Resurrection morning.
Trinity vs. Tritheism
The orthodox teaching of the Trinity affirms three things: God is three persons; each person is fully (not part of) God and is of the same nature, and there is one God.
Ellen White, however, endorsed three separate beings until she died in 1915. Adventism still perceives the “Godhead” to be three distinct beings instead of One God each of whom shares substance with the others.
Here are two of her statements defining her “trio”—the tritheism that is the Adventist godhead:
There are three living persons of the heavenly trio; in the name of these three great powers—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and these powers will co-operate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ. EGW, Evangelism, p. 615, par 1, 1905.
In the name of whom were you baptized? You went down into the water in the name of the three great Worthies in heaven—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. […] Those who have been baptized can claim the help of the three great Worthies of heaven to keep them from falling, and to reveal through them a character that is after the divine similitude. […] You are baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. You are raised up out of the water to live henceforth in newness of life—to live a new life. You are born unto God, and you stand under the sanction and the power of the three holiest Beings in heaven, who are able to keep you from falling. […] When I feel oppressed and hardly know how to relate myself toward the work that God has given me to do, I just call upon the three great Worthies, and say: You know I cannot do this work in my own strength…EGW, Sermons and Talks, Vol. 1, pp 363–367, 1906.
This week’s Sabbath School lesson reflects EGWs heavenly trio as it discusses the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Saturday’s introduction to the week’s studies says:
John says that if you want to understand God, you must look at Jesus and what has been revealed in the Word. This approach opens to us a whole new world of relationships—among the Three Members of the Godhead, between the Members of the Godhead and humans, and among humans themselves. This week’s lesson looks at how the Gospel of John presents the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but now within the context of the farewell discourse (John 13–17).
Notice that the authors refer to God as “Three Members of the Godhead”. This language does not describe our triune God expressed in three Persons who share all the attributes of God: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, eternality, and spirit (Jn. 4:24). The Adventist “Godhead” has three “members” who are distinct from each other, not sharing actual substance.
Furthermore, in Sunday’s lesson the authors refer to creation as being done by a plural god:
The Gospel of John is written from the standpoint of the overall biblical narrative, beginning with our origins. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Or: In the beginning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created the heavens and the earth. They are the Source of all that exists. They created the universe, including the beings who inhabit it.
Shared Substance
The Bible never refers to God as “they”, nor does it refer to the Persons as “they”. Even more, the lesson describes Jesus as “one Member of the Godhead” who came to heal the breach between man and God caused by sin. Monday’s lesson says this:
The intention of the Godhead was to offer healing to all humanity for that breach caused by sin, even if all humanity would not accept what They offered.
To accomplish the restoration of this relationship, one Member of the Godhead became human. Thus, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, manifesting the glory of God (John 1:14–18). As a result, humanity has received His fullness and grace. This is what Jesus came to share, to declare the glory of God so that the relationship broken by sin might be restored, at least to all who were willing to accept by faith what has been offered them in Christ Jesus.
Again, Jesus is described as a discreet Member of the Godhead who decided to come to earth in human flesh to “heal” and “restore” human’s relationship to God.
The first problem is that this description of Jesus assumes a false definition of God. Adventism’s Godhead comprised of three Members (or worthies or trio) is not the One God of Israel’s Shema confirmed by God the Son Himself. These three members do not share SUBSTANCE.
For example, as an Adventist I believed Jesus was “100% God and 100% man”. It never occurred to me that Jesus could not be a being consisting of 200% of anything. Yet in my physicalist mindset, I had not trouble explaining this impossibility to myself. If “God” were represented by an apple pie and I cut that pie into three parts, each third of the pie was 100% pie. Right? Jesus, therefore, was 100% God.
When I began to realize that my view of “100% God–Jesus” was really representing Jesus as being One-Third of God (since there are three persons or members, in the Adventist Godhead), I began to see that my Adventist Jesus was not the real Jesus described in Scripture. My Adventist view of God represented by an apple pie could affirm that each of the three members was “all God” and they all came from the same “pie”.
But the Scriptural Jesus who is one Person of the One God had to have in Himself 100% of all of God’s attributes. Using the pie as an analogy again, the Adventist Jesus might have a seed in His piece; the Father might contain a piece of core, and the Holy Spirit’s third might have a bit of peel in it. This understanding showed me that the SUBSTANCE of my Adventist God head was different in each person.
The REAL Trinity, though, meant that Jesus would have in Himself all the attributes of the Father who had all the attributes of the Spirit who had all the attributes of the Son—always. In other words, Jesus would have to have in Himself the seed, the piece of core, and the bit of peel—and so would the Father and the Holy Spirit.
With growing horror I realized I had believed in a false Jesus who was NOT 100% God. At the very least, I learned that Jesus gave up His attribute of omnipresence when He became human. If He had a body, I was taught, He could not be everywhere at once. This change in His nature was the reason, I was told, that God sent the Holy Spirit. Jesus could no longer be omnipresent.
Yet now I see that if Jesus gave up omnipresence, He could not—by definition—be God!
Adventist Jesus Heals the Breach
The lesson this week presents the Adventist Jesus as the Member who came to earth and took flesh. He did this, the lesson states, in order to “offer healing to all humanity for that breach caused by sin.” By His coming this way, Jesus became the means of showing us wandering humans how glorious and loving the Father is. In other words, the lesson tells us, Jesus came to serve as the Father’s representative:
Jesus was the Father’s representative on earth, and He came to live out, in human flesh, the Father’s will. In fact, Jesus said that in all things He sought to do the Father’s will, and not His own (John 5:30).…Jesus’ claims about His relationship to the Father are astonishing. He asserts that all of His teachings are the teachings of the Father; that all He says He had personally heard from the Father; that belief in Him is the same as belief in the Father; that both His very words and His works are all of the Father; and that He and the Father are united in loving and working for the salvation of humanity. What a powerful testimony to the closeness of Jesus to His Father in heaven!
Notice that the lesson stresses that Jesus and the Father have a “closeness” to each other, that they are “united in loving and working for the salvation of humanity”.
Yet the Bible never speaks of the Father and the Son as merely “close”. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”—John 10:30.
In fact, Jesus’ claims to literally BE GOD were what led them to try to kill Him:
For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.—John 5:18 LSB
Yet the lesson perpetuates the Adventist idea that Jesus and God were so close it was almost like being one—but they were not substantively the same. At the same time, the lesson teaches the idea that the Son decided to take a body and heal the sin breach, identifying with humanity and showing us how merciful and gracious God the Father really is. He was the Father’s “representative”, not the fullness of God in bodily form.
How Is the Breach Healed?
Even more significantly, the lesson never states HOW Jesus came to heal that breach. It stresses Jesus’ difficult life and suffering, the denials and disloyalties of those who knew Him, and it even mentions that he “died on a cross at the hands of the very ones He came to save”, but the idea of Jesus dying for sins in a substitutionary death is never explained.
Instead, He is presented as a necessary revelation of the character of God so that we wandering humans wouldn’t misunderstand God any longer—but the reality of His death and resurrection are simply not the focus of this lesson. It is a secondary (if not less) matter, and the reader is left without understanding that Jesus’ death was the revelation of God’s mercy to the world.
To be fair, the Teachers Comments do comment on the fact that God was with Jesus as He went to the cross to die for the world, but even there the discreet identities of Jesus and the Father are maintained. The Adventist Godhead is intact throughout this lesson, and the readers are reinforced in their perception of the tritheistic Adventist Godhead who is not the God of Scripture.
The Adventist Jesus is portrayed as self-sacrificing and willing to sacrifice Himself to show us how wonderful God is, but the fact is that Jesus came for one purpose: to reconcile the world to God. His primary purpose was not to show us how good God is and to counter the claims of Satan who says God is not fair. Rather, the Adventist Jesus came as a human who could have failed in His mission.
The Adventist Jesus came to show us how to love God and obey the law, and He came to help us to be good.
Enter Relationship with the Father and Son
The Teachers Comments reinforce the role of Jesus as Example and Teacher rather than as Redeemer. On pages 146, 147 we find this:
Perhaps the one reference that sums up this focus is Christ’s reply to Philip in John 14:9, in which the Savior affirms, “ ‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father’ ” (NKJV). This clear declaration should lead all of us to relate to God the Father as we relate to God the Son, for whatever characteristics of Jesus we see in the Gospels, we should also see as pertaining to the Father. This encouraging realization should help us to enter into a mutually loving relationship with the Father as with the Son.
cThe relevant question to ask ourselves here is, How would our daily lives be impacted if we followed Christ’s example of not doing our will but of doing the wise will of our heavenly Father instead?
Once again, the heart of the gospel—the heart of why the real Jesus came to earth—is missing. HOW does one “enter into a mutually loving relationship with the Father as with the Son”? How on earth can any of us follow Christ’s example of not doing our own will?
We see here that again Adventism has no understanding of our shared nature: dead in sin and under the wrath of God. Adventism has no idea that humans are not born with a rudimentary gift of faith and repentance. We humans are totally dead in sin by nature, objects of wrath by nature. We cannot rise above our natures without an intervention from God!
Jesus did NOT come to be our example for entering a relationship with God or with Him. We cannot have a “mutually loving relationship” with God apart from Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for sin.
Furthermore, we cannot have a relationship with Jesus and not with the Father, as the quote above suggests. Biblically, God Is One. If we trust the Son and believe that He has finished the required atonement for our sin, we are born again and transferred out of death into life. When we pass from death to life, we are literally born of God—our triune One God—and we are in relationship with Him—not “Them”. There is no “them”! God is One!
Not Believing Unto Salvation
The Adventist Godhead is not the God of the Bible. The Adventist Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture. The Adventist Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of Scripture.
If we are believing in the wrong Jesus—a Jesus who could have failed, who gave up one of the central attributes of God—we are not believing unto salvation. Only the God of Scripture saves.
We cannot decide to be like Jesus, and we cannot choose to obey God. We are naturally DEAD in sin—but the Father draws us to the Son, and He reveals Himself to us. He gives us the faith to believe, and when we see who Jesus is, our proper response is to believe.
The real Trinity has done everything necessary for our salvation, and our marching orders are to believe what the Bible says.
This lesson reinforces a weak Example Jesus and a Father God with a reputation problem who relies on the Holy Spirit to cause guilt and conviction in us and to make us repent of our sin. But this Godhead isn’t taught in Scripture.
God the Son has come and taken human flesh in order to be able to sacrifice sinless, sufficient human blood that will cover all human sin. He came to reconcile the world to God—not to correct our understanding of God. Rather He came to rescue us from our natural death and from His own wrath, and when we see that He has taken our imputed sin into Himself and endured the Father’s wrath for sin in our place, we can trust Him with our sin and believe.
Have you believed? Have you trusted the One God of Scripture and thanked Him for sending the Son to die for you? Have you believed that the Lord Jesus died for your sin according to Scripture, that He was buried, and that He rose on the third day according to Scripture—breaking the curse of sin?
If you hear His voice TODAY, believe! You will be born of the Spirit, and you will never be separated from God your Savior. †
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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