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,