Since the early beginning of the Advent movement in 1844, the divinity of Jesus Christ has always been one of its fundamental beliefs. Formulated for the first time in 1872 and several times since then, it was stipulated again in the following term at the General Conference session of 1980: "God the Eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Through Him all things were created, the character of God is revealed, the salvation of humanity is accomplished, and the world is judged. Forever truly God, He became also truly man, Jesus the Christ"[1]
This does not mean that at the beginning of the movement believers did not have various shades of opinion regarding Jesus' divinity. Of those pastors who joined the Advent movement in 1844, 38 believed in the Trinity, while five were Semi-Arian, including James White, Joseph Bates, Uriah Smith and, later, Joseph H. Waggoner--all pillars of the new faith. Some of these men came out of the Christian Connection, a movement that denied the equality of the Father and the Son.[2]
These men did not deny the divinity of Christ or that He was the Creator of heaven and earth, the Son of God, Lord and Saviour; but they argued about the meaning of the words "Son" and "Father," affirming that the Son had a beginning in the infinite past--a Semi-Arian position.
When they became Seventh-day Adventists, these pastors retained their Semi-Arian beliefs for a while; it shows up here and there in their writings. Its eventual disappearance is marked with little controversy. Such controversy might have endangered the unity of the new movement, but the pioneers expressed openly their divergent opinions and discussed them in a spirit of prayer, and found solutions through intense study of the Word of God.
James Springer White (1821-1881)[3]
James White was a cofounder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church with Ellen G. White and Joseph Bates. He was born August 4, 1821, at Palmyra, Maine. His father was a descendant of one of the Mayflower pilgrims. After hearing William Miller preach about the second coming of Christ, James White joined the Millerite movement and experienced the Great Disappointment of 1844. While many who had expected the coming of Jesus in glory on October 22, 1844, gave up their faith, James White formed the nucleus of a group who became the pioneers of the Advent movement.
James White was a brilliant preacher and a prolific writer. Greatly encouraged by Ellen Harmon, whom he married in 1846, he started several magazines: Present Truth in 1849, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald in 1850, Youth's Instructor in 1852, and Signs of the Times in 1874. Between 1853 and 1880 he published four books and several pamphlets.
In articles published in Advent Review and Sabbath Herald James White expressed his views on the divinity of Jesus. At first he categorically rejected what he described as "the old trinitarian absurdity" which favored the ide a that "Jesus Christ is the very and Eternal God.[4] However, after 1853 he affirmed his belief in the divinity of Christ. [5]
Twenty-three years later he wrote that Seventh-day Adventists "hold the divinity of Christ so nearly with the Trinitarian."[6] ln 1877 he published an article entitled "Christ equal with God."[7] A short time before his death he stated clearly once again that "the Son was equal with the Father in creation, in the institution of the law and in the government of created intelligences."[8] While James White's position was rather moderate, such was not the case with Uriah Smith.
Uriah Smith (1832-1903)[9]
Uriah Smith was born in New Hampshire in 1832, shortly after William Miller began to preach the imminent return of Christ. He was 20 when he became an Adventist in 1852. As early as 1855 he was appointed assistant editor of the Review and Herald, where he was a close associate of James White. Very quickly he became chief editor, a position he held almost continuously until his death.
Uriah Smith had a dominating personality and held strongly to his convictions. His books and articles exercised a strong influence on the church's doctrinal beliefs. He is known mainly for his books on Bible prophecy: Daniel and the Revelation, The United States in Prophecy, and Looking Unto Jesus.
Like James White, Joseph Bates, and others, Uriah Smith eventually gave up his Semi-Arian position, but not without difficulty. In his first book, Thoughts on the Revelation (1867), he openly stated his antitrinitarian views."[10] Not only did he deny the existence of the Holy Spirit, but he also considered that "complete eternity ... can be applicable only to God, the Father."[11] This language, he says, is never applied to Christ.
In his commentary on Revelation 3:14, Uriah Smith specifies that Christ is not recognized as "the beginner, but the beginning, of the creation, the first created being."[12] Shortly thereafter he moderated his antitrinitarian statements. At the time of the publication of Daniel and the Revelation in 1882, he explained that the "only begotten Son" of John 3:16 could hardly be applied to "a being created in an ordinary sense."[13]
In 1898, in his last book, Looking Unto Jesus, Uriah Smith renounced the idea of Christ as "a created being." But he maintained that at some point in time Jesus "appeared," and that consequently He had a beginning. "God atone 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, KJV). This uncreated Word was the Being who, in the fullness of time, was made flesh, and dwelt among us. His beginning was not like that of any other being in the universe."[14]
Speaking of the position of Christ before the Incarnation, Smith affirmed that it was "equal to the Father." However," no work of creation was accomplished till after Christ became an active agent upon the scene."[15] Then appears this odd statement: "With the Son, the evolution of deity, as deity, ceased."[16] In other words, Smith held that Christ was not created, but was "derived from God."[17] This point of view was also held by Joseph H. Waggoner.
Joseph H. Waggoner (1820-1889)[18]
Joseph H. Waggoner was a zealous defender of the Semi-Arian position, especially as it related to the divinity of Christ. He was also opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity and considered the Holy Spirit as merely an impersonal influence.[19]
Waggoner does not appear to have belonged to the Christian Connection, but these views were shared by several denominations of that period. Before joining the growing Advent movement, he was a member of the Baptist Church, and was employed as the assistant editor for a political journal in Wisconsin. Very quickly he found his place at the side of the Adventist pioneers and held very influential positions, such as editor for Signs of the Times, following James White. He later edited the American Sentinel, and finally the Pacific Health Journal. He was the author of various articles and several books, including The Atonement in 1868, and From Eden to Eden in 1886.
Joseph H. Waggoner could not attend the General Conference session of Minneapolis in 1888 because of ill health. He died in 1889. The question of the divinity of Jesus was on the agenda for the 1888 Conference. On this occasion Joseph's son, Ellet J. Waggoner, refuted the last Semi-Arian arguments remaining in the church, and ultimately laid the biblical foundation needed to establish the full and complete divinity of Jesus Christ.
Ellet J. Waggoner (1855-1916)[20]
Ellet J. Waggoner was the first Adventist theologian to present a systematic Christology, bath as it relates to the divinity and the humanity of Jesus Christ.
Born in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Ellet J. Waggoner studied at Battle Creek College, Michigan. He continued his studies at Bellevue Medical College, New York, working toward a diploma in medicine. He began his career as a doctor at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. But he found that he preferred to preach, so he entered the gospel ministry.
After revealing a talent for writing, he was asked to serve as assistant editor for the Signs of the Times magazine[21] in 1884,under the direction of his father. Two years later he became chief editor, a position he held until 1891. From 1892 to 1902 he worked in England, first as editor of Present Truth magazine, then as the first president of the South England Conference. Upon his return to the United States, because of his divorce and remarriage, he spent the remainder of his career separated from the church as a professor of theology at Battle Creek College under J. H. Kellogg.[22]
Waggoner was a most prolific theologian. He wrote several important books,[23] a large number of pamphlets, and hundreds of magazine articles. But Waggoner is best known for the role he played at the General Conference session of 1888 at Minneapolis with his colleague, Alonzo T. Jones. Together they made their mark in the history of the Adventist Church with their presentations on justification by faith. For Waggoner, the subject could be understood only through the lens of Christology.
As early as 1884 Waggoner published a series of articles in the Signs of the Times, in which he affirmed his faith in the divinity of Christ, Creator of all things, whom the angels worship exactly as they do God the Father. "He [God] gave His only-begotten Son--the one by whom all things were made, whom angels worship with reverence equal to that which they yield to God--that man might have eternal life."[24]
At the General Conference session of Minneapolis in 1888, Waggoner presented a series of talks on the divinity of Christ--a subject that was on the agenda of the conference. While he left no written version of his presentations, Waggoner did publish a series of four articles on the same subject immediately after the session.[25] This suggests that they were accounts of his talks. They are found also in the first four sections of the book Christ and His Righteousness, published the following year in 1890. This book contains most of the dominant ideas of Waggoner's Christology.[26]
At the time several leaders of the church still cherished Semi-Arian, or adoptionist, concepts concerning the divine nature of Christ; hence the significance of the question raised by Waggoner as he took on the problem: "Is Christ God?"
To prove that He really was God, Waggoner quoted many, verses in which Christ was called God.[27] For the benefit of those who still denied it, he specified that the name of God "was not given to Christ in consequence of some great achievement, but it is His by right of inheritance."[28] "Christ is the 'express image' of the Father's person (Heb. 1:3). ... As the Son of the self-existent God, He has by nature all the attributes of Deity."[29] Christ Himself taught in the most categorical manner that He was God (John 14:8, 9; 10:33; 8:58).[30] Waggoner emphasized the importance of Paul's declaration in Col. 1:19: "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him;" and 2:9: "all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." Waggoner labels this the "most absolute and unequivocal testimony",[31] a notion that was repeated 15 times in his study.
It is not enough to say: "Jesus Christ is God." The apostles describe Him also "as Creator." Waggoner quotes Colossians 1:15-17, which "leaves not a thing in the universe that Christ did not create. ... All depend upon Him for existence. ... He upholds all things by the word of His power."[32] In Hebrews 1:8-10, the Father Himself says to the Son: "Thou, O Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thine hands."[33]
Who then can dare deny "the divinity of Christ and the fact that He is the Creator of all things"?[34] To insist as "many people" do, that "Christ is a created being" on the basis of the single verse in Revelation 3:14, is quite simply to deny His divinity.[35] The same is true when one relies on Paul's expression, declaring that Christ was "the firstborn over all creation" (Col. 1:15). The following verse, observes Waggoner, shows clearly that He is "the Creator, and not a creature."[36]
However, even Waggoner believed that "there was a time when Christ proceeded forth and came out 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."[37]
Finally, Waggoner emphasized that "since He is the only begotten Son of God, He is of the very substance and nature of God, and possesses by birth all the attributes of God. ... He possesses immortality in His own right, and can confer immortality upon others."[38] That is why, Waggoner concludes: "He is rightly called Jehovah, the I AM."[39]
Waggoner's insistence that Christ was by nature of the same substance as God and possessed life in Himself was no doubt a novelty in the eyes of some of the delegates at the Minneapolis session. His position on the divine nature of Christ was probably part of the reason for the opposition by many of the delegates to his message of justification by faith. He evidently felt it was essential to affirm the equality of Christ with God, for only the life of God in Christ had the power to save sinners by justifying them by His grace.
Waggoner's contribution on this point, as on that concerning the human nature of Christ was decisive. Froom recognizes it readily: "In 1888 Waggoner was pioneering without the benefit of her [Ellen White] many later statements" "not only on Christ's eternal pre-existence but on His individual self-existence and His infinity, equality, and omnipotence."[40]
Ellen White herself expressed it after hearing Waggoner: "The fullness of the Godhead in Jesus Christ has been set forth among us with beauty and loveliness.[41] For her, it demonstrated that God was at work among them. Waggoner's interpretation was, for the most part, the theological demonstration of what she had always believed and stated in her writings up to that time.
Ellen Gould White (1827-1915)[42]
Brought up in the faith of the Methodist Church, Ellen White had no problem dealing with Christ's divinity, His pre-existence, and His equality with the Father. It is, in large measure, thanks to her and to her writings that the doctrine of the Trinity was ultimately established. Uninitiated into the complexities of theology, she carefully avoided falling into the trap of past Christological controversies. Likewise, she never took part in direct confrontations with her closest associates who held erroneous ideas about the person of Christ. This did not prevent her influence from being decisive.
Born on November 26, 1827, in Gorham, Maine, Ellen grew up in a God-fearing family. At the age of 12 she was baptized by immersion into the Methodist Church. At the close of William Miller's sermons on the soon return of Christ, the whole family joined the Millerite movement and experienced the great disappointment of October 22, 1844.
In December 1844, still stunned by those events, Ellen experienced her first vision during a prayer meeting. As time passed it became apparent that the Lord had bestowed upon her the gift of prophecy, speaking to her in dreams and visions. As the messenger of the Lord, she served as counselor at the very heart of the church. In August 1846 Ellen Harmon married James White. Together they served as pillars of the Advent movement.
We cannot emphasize enough how the Lord used Ellen White to lead the small Adventist community, from its very beginning, to the Bible as the Word of God, and through the Bible to Jesus Christ. If there is one writer who honors, adores, and exalts Christ, His character, His life, and His work, it is Ellen White. To see this, one need only read the books she wrote regarding His life and teachings.[43] Indeed, in all of her books the Son of God is the central subject.
At Minneapolis Ellen White upheld the principle of sola scriptura, promoted by Waggoner, to resolve the problem confronting the delegates on the subject of the divinity of Christ, justification by faith, and the law in Galatians. She had been unable to find a previous manuscript she had written on the subject to J.H. Waggoner, and she suggested that this might be providential: "God has a purpose in this. He wants us to go to the Bible and get the Scripture evidence.[44] In her closing talk entitled "A Call to a Deeper Study of the Word," Ellen White advanced an example of Waggoner's own method.
"Dr. Waggoner," she said, "has presented his views in a plain, straight-forward manner, as a Christian should. If he is in error, you should, in a calm, rational, Christlike manner, seek to show him from the Word of God where he is out of harmony with its teachings. ... Let us take our Bibles, and with humble prayer and a teachable spirit, come to the great Teacher of the World. ... The truth must be presented as it is in Jesus. ... We must search the Scriptures for evidences of truth. ... All who reverence the Word of God just as it reads, all who do His will to the best of their ability, will know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."[46]
Because she had followed this method from the beginning, Ellen White never had a problem with Christ's divinity. She affirmed Christ's equality with God.[46] She described Him as "the Majesty of heaven ... equality with God",[47] "Sovereign of heaven, one in power and authority with the Father",[48] "of one substance, possessing the same attributes" with the Father,[49] "the only-begotten Son of God, who was with the Father from eternal ages,"[50] "the Lord God ... clothed with the habiliments of humanity",[51] "Infinite and omnipotent; the eternal, self-existent Son."[52]
In her major work, The Desire of Ages, first published in 1898, Ellen White writes in the first lines of the book: "From the days of eternity the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the Father; He was 'the image of God,' the image of His greatness and majesty, 'the outshining of His glory.' It was to manifest this glory that He came to our world ... to be 'God with us.' "[53] Even more pointedly, she wrote, "In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived. ... The divinity of Christ is the believer's assurance of eternal life.[54]
In an article published in 1900, Ellen White insisted, "Christ is the pre-existent, self-existent Son of God. ... In speaking of His pre-existence, Christ carries the mind back through dateless ages. He assures us that there never was a time when He was not in close fellowship with the eternal God. He to whose voice the Jews were then listening had been with God as one brought up with Him."[55] Likewise, in another article, dated April 5, 1906, Ellen White stated for the last time what became the official belief of the Adventist Church on the matter of the divinity of Christ. "Christ was God essentially, and in the highest sense. He was with God from all eternity ... a distinct person, yet one with the Father."[56]
Ellen White's influence was decisive in helping to dissipate the remaining Semi-Arian beliefs that remained among some members at the heart of the church. She was favorably supported by Ellet J. Waggoner, and later by William W. Prescott,[57] and Arthur G. Daniells.[58]
Notes: