Plato’s True Forms,

Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover,

Plotinus’s theory of The One,

Sabellius’ modalism,

Arius’ God-begetting-god,

Kellogg’s “non-entity” God,

and the current anti-trinitarianism vying for attention on the edges of Adventism,

are all the same basic idea in various forms.

It’s all monism, which is the foundational premise of pantheism.

Fundamental Belief Number Two

Due to the insistence of the Advent pioneers that the divine personhood of Christ be affirmed as distinct from that of the Father, followed by the developments in Ellen White’s thinking that led her to insist upon the distinct personhood of the Holy Spirit, as well as the co-eternality of both the Son and the Spirit with the Father, Seventh-day Adventist scholarship was able to land upon a trinitarian statement of belief that affirms both the oneness of God and the distinct personhood of each member of the Godhead. This doctrine of God is articulated in the first sentence of Fundamental Belief Number Two:

There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three coeternal Persons.

Simple, brilliant, beautiful clarity!

What the anti-trinitarians apparently don’t realize is that this trinitarian position was arrived at by the church as the logical outworking of the theological work done by the Advent pioneers and Ellen White. While the anti-trinitarians imagine they are being true to the pioneers, the fact is they are engaging in a kind of theological backsliding that denies the intent of the work done by our theological forebears. It is Adventist scholarship that is being true to the pioneers, not the anti-trinitarian advocates.

“But Ellen White never used the word Trinity,” the anti-trinitarians argue.

No, she didn’t. She did something better and far more theologically astute for her time: she took into account the legitimate concern of the pioneers and gave us descriptive language that rendered Adventism decidedly trinitarian while avoiding both modalism and pantheism. Based on a clear theological sense of the distinct personhood of God the Son, alongside the distinct personhood of God the Holy Spirit, alongside the distinct personhood of God the Father, Ellen White coined the term, “the Heavenly Trio.” To have simply said, in her historical context, “I believe in the Trinity,” would have carried the risk of being misunderstood as affirming modalism, which was the very thing her pioneer brothers were pushing back on so passionately. So she did the smart thing: she used descriptive language to intelligently convey a trinitarian vision of God that clearly communicated that there are three persons that compose one divine reality.

When all the reasoning is done, human beings can only conceive of God in one of two ways:

1 God is a plurality of being, in which case God can be conceived of in terms of interpersonal love. From that premise, the creation emerging from God can be conceived of as genuinely free and morally responsible.
2 God is an absolute singularity, in which case God can only be conceived of in terms of impersonal power. From that premise, creation can only be conceived of as an extension of God with no real interpersonal freedom and no moral responsibility.

The most direct theological route to erase love from our understanding of God’s character is to depersonalize God. And the most direct route to depersonalize God is to turn God into an absolute singularity. If your theology allows you to go back far enough to finally conceive of God existing alone, without relationship, then you have effectively conceded that power, not love, is ultimate.

1 Incapable of change

2 Incapable of feeling

3 The philosophical and/or theological teaching that all events and outcomes are determined by preceding events of natural laws or by the will of God, meaning that free will does not actually exist as a cause of any event or outcome.

“The concept of ‘covenant’ constitutes a totalizing theological vision. Covenant explains everything. If you understand the idea of covenant, you understand the whole point of the Bible.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Covenantal Trinitarianism

The Bible is the story of a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God.

That’s it and that’s all.

Examined for what it is, on its own terms, in its own voice, with its own cast of characters, the Bible is an unfolding narrative that reveals God entering into covenant relationship with human beings and then following through to keep that covenant at any and all cost to Himself, with the covenant reaching its climactic point of realization, clarity, and fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ.

What the Bible is not, is a speculative philosophy about the metaphysics of God. The anti-trinitarian obsession with how and when Jesus came into existence is simply not addressed in Scripture, beyond matter-of-factly informing us that this human Messiah we encounter at the climax of the story is none other than God incarnate.

The Bible is a Hebrew text answering Hebrew questions of covenant, not a Greek text answering Greek questions of abstract philosophy.

A Brief History of God

I’m suggesting “Covenantal Trinitarianism” as an economic theological term for what Seventh-day Adventists already believe, as expressed in Fundamental Belief Number Two. The term serves to distinguish the Adventist view of the Trinity from modalism. It achieves this by positing that God is a relational dynamic of three distinct but perfectly integrated persons, as opposed to the idea that God is one person projecting three modes of being.

Taking in the big narrative arc of Scripture as a whole, a brief covenant history can be outlined something like this:

1 The Covenant Character of God: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Therefore, God is and always has been a social unit of other-centered, self-giving passion, each member of “the Heavenly Trio” living for the others with covenantal faithfulness. Genesis 1:1; John 1:1-3, 18; John 17:24
2 The Covenant of Creation: Creation is God’s love actualized in material form. God, precisely because God is love, created others in His own image, free agents with whom to share the wonder of covenantal existence. “Let Us make man in Our image,” one of the Three said to the others, “according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Within the fellowship of the triune God, creation was embarked upon as a covenant agreement.
3 The Covenant of Peace: The same love that prompted God to create humanity would move God to save humanity at any cost to Himself, if that were to become necessary. God was committed to remain covenantally faithful to the human race, even if they were to become unfaithful to Him. All three members of the Godhead agreed, even before creation, to the covenant of peace. Each one committed to their respective roles in the creation-salvation enterprise, each one committed to play their part in the “covenant of peace” (Isaiah 54:10). Isaiah 42:1-6; Isaiah 55:3; Matthew 1; Luke 1-3; John 1
4 The Covenant Promise: Because God is love, God promised to enter into complete empathetic solidarity with covenant-breaking humanity. Of covenant necessity, God would become an actual member of the human race. In order to redeem humanity from within our own genetic realm, one of the members of the Trinity would come into our world as the Son of God, standing in Adam’s place in order to redeem Adam’s fall. The Old Testament is a covenant document, composed of promises and prophecies that foretell the eventual coming of the promised one. Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 9:6-7; Daniel 9; Romans 10:4; 2 Corinthians 1:20; Galatians 4:4-5
5 The Covenant People: In order to carry forward the promise of peace with fallen humanity, God established a corporate people through which a body of covenant promises, prophecies, and laws could be communicated to the world and through which the covenant Son of God could be born to the world, all toward the grand goal of reestablishing humanity within the relational parameters of covenantal love. Genesis 12:1-3; Exodus 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 4:5-8
6 The Covenant Son of God: God faithfully kept His promise by entering the world as our second Adam, through the lineage of Abraham. As the Son of promise, Christ lived out the terms of the covenant, gave His life as the covenant sacrifice, rose from the dead victorious over sin and death, and ascended to the throne of the universe bearing within Himself the humanity He came to redeem. An actual member of the human race—the Son of God that Adam was meant to be—now occupies the throne of the universe awaiting our arrival, that we might rule with Him. God became a member of the human race in order to reincorporate humanity into the joy of covenantal existence. 2 Corinthians 1:20; Matthew 1:1; Luke 1:67-79; John 17:24-26; Ephesians 2:4-7; 1 Corinthians 15
7 The Covenant Community: God has established in the world, through His faithful covenant Son, a covenant community known as the church. It is the mission of the church to proclaim God’s faithful love for the human race—which is the gospel—to break down all walls of relational hostility and demonstrate what covenant fellowship looks like in Christ. Isaiah 56; John 13:35; 1 John 1:1-5; Ephesians 2:14; Hebrews 2:10-18

Covenant Explains Everything

The concept of “covenant” constitutes a totalizing theological vision. Covenant explains everything. If you understand the idea of covenant, you understand the whole point of the Bible.

Covenant defines God’s character.

Covenant explains why God made the world.

Covenant reveals how humans were meant to live in relation to one another.

Covenant explains how God intends to restore humanity to right relationship with Himself and with one another.

Since the Bible is a story, it follows that it is driven by a theme, a plot, a scheme of thought. Some great purpose is being worked out in the living pages of Scripture. That great purpose is the reestablishment of faithful love in all human relations. The main characters that drive the narrative are these:

Adam and Eve: the original son and daughter of God, made in the image of God, charged with the task of procreating the image of God and stewarding the earth with covenant faithfulness.

Abraham and Sarah: the chosen human vessels through whom a succession of sons would be born to the world until, finally, the promised one would arrive in the flesh to be the final, eschatological Son of God on behalf of the whole human race.

Isaac: the covenant son of God through Abraham and Sarah.

Jacob: the covenant son of God through Isaac and Rebekah.

Israel: the corporate son of God among the nations.

David: the son of God in the office of the messianic (anointed) king.

Jesus: the long-awaited Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of God, the promised one who would come to occupy the vacated position of Adam and reestablish the human race in the original position God made them to occupy.

In Matthew’s version of the story, God became the Son of God “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).

In Luke’s telling, God became the Son of God “to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to our father Abraham” (Luke 1:72-73).

In John’s version, God became the Son of God to reveal that God “so loved the world (with covenant faithfulness) that He gave His only begotten Son (just as promised), that whoever believes in Him (as the new Son of God in Adam’s stead) should not perish but have everlasting life (as faithful covenant sons and daughters of God)” (John 3:16).

These are simply three ways of saying the same thing: God became the Son of God in order to keep covenant with the human race and bring us back into covenant relation with Himself and one another.

The Eternal Covenant

Scripture repeatedly informs us that this thing called “covenant” is “eternal” in nature. The great purpose being worked out within the biblical narrative is “the eternal covenant” (Genesis 9:16; 17:7, 13, 19; 2 Samuel 23:5; Psalm 105:10; Isaiah 24:5; 61:8; Jeremiah 31:3; 32:40; Hebrews 13:20).1

Meaning what, exactly?

In what sense is the covenant an “eternal” reality?

The covenant is eternal because covenant defines who God is, and God is eternal. The essence of the covenant is God’s love, which is the eternal reality of God’s very being (Isaiah 54:10; 55:3).

To say that the covenant is eternal is simply to say that relational integrity, or faithful love, defines reality as God created reality to operate, and that this operating system is designed after the pattern of God’s own intrinsic identity.

Apart from and before all creation, God is a relational unit of three persons eternally coexisting with love each one for the others. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant Character of God.

Creation arises out of an agreement between the three members of the Heavenly Trio to make others in their collective image. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant of Creation.

The plan of salvation, like creation, arises out of an agreement between the three members of the Heavenly Trio to remain faithful to humanity even in the face of humanity’s unfaithfulness to God, to seek reconciliation, and to do everything possible to restore the relationship. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant of Peace.

Through Moses and the prophets—beginning with Genesis 3:15 and expanding from there into numerous songs and symbols, poems and prophecies—the entire corpus of the Hebrew Scriptures pointed forward to the arrival of the one who would keep the promise God made to the human race through Abraham. We can therefore speak of the whole Old Testament as The Covenant Promise.

Having made the promise to redeem Adam’s failure through the offspring of the woman, God chose Abraham to initiate a lineage through which the promised child could eventually enter the world. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant People.

The New Testament opens with the genealogy of Jesus for a reason. “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers,” until we come to Joseph and Mary who begot “Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1). Literally, the whole point of the New Testament is to announce that Jesus is the long-awaited Son of God foretold by all the prophets. We can therefore speak with theological accuracy of The Covenant Son of God.

According to the New Testament, the church established by Christ is the founding of a new humanity and a new Israel, to be composed of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people group, who are to be known by the world for their love. We can therefore speak of the church with theological accuracy as The Covenant Community.

An Exercise in Missing the Point

The difficulty the anti-trinitarian advocates are having is that they are not taking into account the story of the Bible. They see verses and then engage in a great deal of interpretive liberty to make their selected verses say things that the authors of Scripture know nothing about. They see trees, but they don’t see the forest in which the trees are situated. They don’t even seem to know that they are in a forest at all. They ask questions of Scripture that Scripture itself doesn’t ask or answer. They are curious about the metaphysical nature of God, whereas the biblical writers are concerned with the covenant character of God. They are Greek thinkers lost on the landscape of a Hebrew text.

Anti-trinitarians believe Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ, a long time ago in eternity past, by some mysterious means, was birthed into existence by God the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is the emanating influence of the Father, rather than a person distinct from the Father. Therefore, the Father is the “One True God” and the Trinity is a heretical doctrine that amounts to idolatry. This is the big truth, the testing truth, the saving truth that people must know and accept in order to be right with God, in order to not be idolaters, in order to be saved at last.

The big problem is, not a single book of the Bible, nor even a single chapter in any book of the Bible, displays any effort to explain this idea. The best the anti-trinitarians can do is to isolate a few sentences and impose extra-biblical meaning on them in order to construct their position. All the while, the heartbreaking tragedy is that the big, beautiful story of God’s faithful love is completely blocked from their view as they obsess over Jesus being an anciently begotten God, subordinate to the One True God.

It cannot be overstated that the entire anti-trinitarian doctrine is based on a single biblical expression: “only begotten Son” (John 1:18; 3:16, 18). There are other verses that are brought to bear upon the subject—Proverbs 8 is chief among them, which we will unpack in the next chapter—but if the term “only begotten Son” were not used in the New Testament, the anti-trinitarian view would not exist. In that one term, they imagine the Bible is trying to inform us about the ontology and chronology of Christ. The whole doctrine is built on the fact that Jesus is called the “only begotten Son” of the Father.

And this means that the anti-trinitarian position is based on a very simple but disastrous oversight: the term, “only begotten son,” is derived directly from the Old Testament narrative, where we are explicitly told exactly what it means. Ignoring the Old Testament material, the anti-trinitarian advocates simply isolate the term and tell us it means something that, in fact, it does not. Think this through:

1 The anti-trinitarian reads the term, “only begotten Son.”
2 The anti-trinitarian then simply tells us what the term means without so much as acknowledging the Old Testament source of the term. In fact, the anti-trinitarian proponents don’t even need the Old Testament for their position.
3 The anti-trinitarian then simply tells us what the term means without so much as acknowledging the Old Testament source of the term. In fact, the anti-trinitarian proponents don’t even need the Old Testament for their position.
4 And what does the anti-trinitarian tell us it means for Jesus to have been “begotten”? Well, that a really long time ago in the ancient eternal past, the One True God birthed another God into existence, and that’s how we got Jesus.

This interpretation is simply manufactured, on the spot, requiring only that we have before us the words, “only begotten Son.” The entire sonship narrative given to us by Moses and the prophets is completely ignored in favor of this made-up Greek metaphysics interpretation about a greater God bringing a lesser God into existence.

So, then, the anti-trinitarian position is based on a mistake so elementary that it blows one’s mind to realize that anyone who has actually read the whole Bible would fall for it. It is a wonder that the view has been able to cause endless debates for nearly two thousand years. It is a greater wonder that the view has produced entire denominations—Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarians—while being utterly dependent on simply not acknowledging the actual source of the sonship terminology in the very story that defines it. Yes, that was a long sentence and I would read it again if I were you.

The New Testament does use the words Father, Son, and begotten. And, yes, the Bible formulates sentences with those words to call Jesus “the only begotten Son” of “the Father.” But here’s the thing: all of those New Testament words have their origin in the covenant story of the Old Testament. So we don’t need to guess what they mean. The story itself tells us what they mean.

God created a man and called him Adam, and the New Testament identifies Adam as the original son of God.

Adam sinned, thus forfeiting his sonship position.

God promised that a child would be born to humanity and redeem the forfeited sonship position of Adam.

To accomplish the promise, God established a lineage through which the child would be born to the world. The promised Son would be faithful to the sonship identity that Adam failed to maintain.

God entered into covenant relationship with Abraham, promising that Abraham and his wife, Sarah, would have a son, through whom the whole human race would be blessed and restored to covenantal relationship with God.

Abraham had a son named Isaac, who was designated as the son of the covenant promise.

Isaac had a son named Jacob, who was designated as the son of the covenant promise.

Jacob had twelve sons who collectively grew into a corporate people and were taken into Egyptian bondage. Upon delivering them from bondage, God introduced Himself to Israel as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and explained to them that in their deliverance from bondage He was begetting them and becoming their Father as a newly birthed nation (Exodus 4:22-23; Deuteronomy 32:6).

Israel, now designated as God’s only begotten son among the other nations, was to be educated under Moses and the prophets in the ways of covenantal love. In this way Israel was to become a light to the nations, demonstrating that the covenantal God of Israel is different in character than the demon-gods that rule the other nations. The witness of God’s only begotten son, Israel, would communicate to the other nations that God’s covenantal system generates flourishing relationships on all levels. In this way, the other nations would be attracted to God and be incorporated into Israel, restoring the sonship status of all human beings.

But instead of modeling God’s covenant system to the other nations, Israel chose monarchy as a governing system in rebellion against God. Israel was warned by God’s prophet that having a king was not the way to go, foretelling the horrific results that would inevitably follow. But the people insisted upon monarchy as their chosen governing system, so God accommodated their insistence. As a result, Israel invited the hostility of the other nations.

Saul was Israel’s first king. He proved the corrupting influence of monarchical power, just as God had warned would be the case. Then David became king. Despite his own demonstration of the wrongfulness of monarchy as a governing system, he also demonstrated characteristics that rendered him God’s chosen one for the continuation of the covenant lineage. At this point, David, the anointed king of Israel, became the son of God in the messianic line.

So, then, in the very context of this story, against the backdrop of God’s covenantal plan, Jesus was born to the world and bore the title, “the Son of God.” By conferring this title upon Him, the New Testament authors mean exactly what the foregoing narrative means:

Jesus is the covenantal Son of God.

Jesus is the Messianic Son of God in the Abrahamic, David lineage.

Reaching all the way back to the beginning of the story, Jesus is the Adamic Son of God.

This is the great narrative of the Bible and this is the meaning of the Sonship of Christ. The authors of Scripture—the prophets and the apostles—are all on the same page, reading from the same script that set the story in motion, and then working out the implication of that story to its glorious climax in Christ, the new Son of God in Adam’s stead.

“God is Love” Vs Everything Else

In the big history of ideas, we basically have before us:

God is love

vs.

Everything else

And I mean that, not as a trite oversimplification, but as a robust and clarifying statement of theological significance.

The God of the biblical narrative is utterly, completely, extremely distinct from everything else available within the total realm of human thought.

On the one hand, we have numerous versions of monistic determinism under three basic categories:

materialistic determinism

pantheistic determinism

and theistic determinism

Everywhere we look on the field of ideas, we encounter determinism—the idea that human beings are the subjects of irresistible forces that determine all the events and outcomes that make up their lives. Those forces are thought to be either natural (occurring within a purely materialistic universe) or supernatural (imposed by an all-controlling God). The allure of determinism isn’t much of a mystery to penetrate. In both its philosophical and theological forms, determinism acts as a self-medicating buffer against the onslaught of our guilt, our fear of moral responsibility, and our terror at the sheer gravity of being. The moment I can make myself believe that:

everything happens for a reason,

whatever will be, will be,

God is in control,

nothing happens other than what was meant to happen,

I am released from any real need for moral introspection and accountability.

That is, I am released from covenant relationship with others as my moral counterparts.

By infinite contrast, we have before us, through Moses and the prophets, the most amazing revelation of God imaginable, which reaches its teleological end in the irresistibly beautiful Jesus Christ. The Hebrew vision of God and of reality is utterly unique. It is unique, both in the ancient historical setting in which it emerged, and also amid all the current religions and philosophies of the world, which almost invariably place humanity under the inertia of irresistible power, either natural or supernatural. Quite literally, no exaggeration, the Yahweh God of Scripture stands alone in history with no rival for sheer moral beauty.

The Bible is not concerned with philosophical questions of metaphysics, but rather with moral questions of interpersonal love. The brilliant Hebrew scholar, Abraham Joshua Heschel, nicely summarizes the essential difference between Greek and Hebrew thought:

To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be? Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity

This is the intensely practical focus that naturally arises from the biblical narrative, as opposed to the intensely philosophical focus that arises from splicing words and verses in order to argue about things that are outside of our intellectual orbit. The Bible isn’t asking us to figure out what God is or how long any member of the Godhead has existed, but rather to discover who God is and what it looks like to live in right relation with God and one another. The story of Scripture is not asking us to engage in philosophical speculations regarding the nature of God, but rather to adore and reflect the character of God. And what is the character of God? Well, the story tells us, and it’s breathtaking.

Once upon an eternity, all there was, was God (Genesis 1:1).

And all there was, was love, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Beautiful, interactive, playful, other-centered love (Psalm 27:4; Proverbs 8:30-31; John 17:24).

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness . . . So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:26-27).

That’s the story of Scripture.

It’s a covenantal story.

Which is to say, it’s a story that tells us who God is and who we are in relation to God and one another.

1 It is beyond the scope of our present pursuit, but there is strong textual evidence to demonstrate that the term, “the eternal gospel,” as occurs in the first angel’s message of Revelation 14 is equivalent to the Old Testament term, “the eternal covenant.” If this is the case, the implication would be that God’s “covenant” with Israel and the “gospel” of Christ are synonymous, leading to the conclusion that the “gospel” is only preached accurately when understood as the outworking of Israel’s covenant history, which is nearly absent from the evangelical preaching of “the gospel.”