The heavenly trio

The HEAVENLY TRIO

Exploring the Views of Ellen White and

the Adventist Pioneers Regarding the Trinity

Designed by Brandon Schroeder

Copyright © 2020 by Ty Gibson

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Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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For my girls, Amber and Leah

Being your dad is a triune wonder:

1. awe-inspiring—to think that you exist, part mom, part me, and all you, these uniquely beautiful beings of wild freedom constrained by love, just blows my mind

2. gratifying—the fact that you are all grown up and still want to hang out with me simply because you love me and like me, is the paramount honor of life

3. hilarious—my goodness you two are funny, with such a whacky, witty, weird humor that I am endlessly entertained

I love you with all my heart, and that is an extreme understatement

Endorsements

As usual, Ty Gibson has done a superb job.

Woody Whidden, Retired Professor of Theology, Theological Seminary, Andrews University

Ty Gibson has written a superb study of the doctrine of God as it was perceived by Ellen White and the early Adventists, sensitive to their real concern for God as a distinct relational being. Gibson appropriately portrays how diligent Bible study moved Adventists past various philosophical pitfalls and took them to a truly biblical perspective of The Heavenly Trio. This sequel to The Sonship of Christ is a brilliant call for Adventists to follow in the footsteps of those early Adventists to comprehend and experience divine, relational, covenantal dynamics.

Denis Kaiser, Assistant Professor of Church History, Theological Seminary, Andrews University

Superb writing and a perfect companion to The Sonship of Christ! The Heavenly Trio compels us to elevate Christ to His rightful place in the Godhead. Truly a seminal work for our time.

John S. Nixon II, DMin, Lead Pastor, Takoma Park Seventh-day Adventist Church

The Heavenly Trio may be one of the most significant books produced in the last couple decades that addresses a theological issue. This book is a ground-breaking work that pushes out the frontiers of Adventist understanding on the subject of the Trinity. A compelling, coherent defense of the doctrine of the Trinity in the context of God’s extravagant covenant love. Timely and profoundly relevant. The Holy Spirit was moving powerfully when this book was written!

Stan Beerman, MDiv, Assistant to the President, Oregon Conference of SDA

I had a professor in seminary that said, “True profundity takes place when an individual is able to take the complex and make it so simple you think to yourself, ‘Why haven’t I ever thought of that?’ and then you realize you never could have reached their conclusion on your own.” Ty has achieved true profundity in The Heavenly Trio. My heart and my intellect have been blessed.

Chad Stuart, Senior Pastor, Spencerville Seventh-day Adventist Church

You will cry, you will sigh, you will burst with joy, and you will experience a firework of love in your theological mind. The Heavenly Trio is the most relatable, comprehensive, and beautiful treatment of the Adventist position on the Trinity I have ever read. Derived from the Hebrew narrative of Scripture and framed in the glorious reality of the eternal covenant of selfless love, this book will open your eyes to the matchless charms of The Heavenly Trio.

Jonathan Walter, General Conference Ministerial Association

In his characteristically fresh and accessible style, Ty Gibson offers a compelling case for the essentially relational nature of God being foundational to all discussions of who God is and what human flourishing looks like. The Heavenly Trio traces the revolutionary, counter-intuitive thread of other-centered love woven through the biblical narrative from the opening pages of Genesis to the closing pages of Revelation and on into the life and thought of Seventh-day Adventist Christians today.

Jody Washburn, Assistant Professor of Theology: Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Languages & Cultures

In this follow-up volume to The Sonship of Christ, Ty Gibson addresses himself to the larger subject of trinitarian theology and its historical development. His thinking and writing, as per usual, are marked by clarity and accessibility. This is not a mere survey; Ty offers some unique historical and even theological insights that are well argued and persuasive. This book deserves a wide audience, particularly among Seventh-day Adventists.

Pastor David Asscherick, Light Bearers

Ty is known for bringing clarity to complicated theological subjects. The idea of the Trinity can be a complicated subject. So clarity is what you will find in this follow up to The Sonship of Christ. The book begins with how the Trinity was understood by Adventist pioneers and then moves forward into a beautiful exposition of how the nature God illuminates covenant, the cross, and the very existence of the Christian community. But to me the beauty of this book is that there is something for everyone in it. If your church community is facing challenges related to some form of anti-trinitarianism, this book is a valuable and indispensable resource. If you are just starting to study the Bible, this book offers a great introduction to the main issues concerning who God is and the theological nuances surrounding the subject of the Trinity. If you are theologically trained, this book provides a thoughtful summary of deep theological ideas related to God’s being, the nature of agency and human freedom, and implications of Trinitarian thinking to community living. If you are a Pastor, this book will provide an opportunity to start a conversation or small group study about crucial questions such as: How can God be loving and all powerful at the same time? Were the Adventist pioneers anti-trinitarian? What are the implications of believing in God in a non-trinitarian way? It was a joy to read this book, and I hope that by reading it you might end up finding your place in the great story of Covenant Triune Divine Love.

Tiago Arrais, Pastor Advent Life Church, Santa Fe, New Mexico

What I appreciate about Ty and specifically this book is his fervent devotion to reframing the beautiful paradigm that God is relational. I also appreciate the honesty of showing how the Advent Movement and its understanding of the Trinity is true to its name—moving, growing and constantly getting a bigger and more beautiful picture of God. I thoroughly enjoyed The Sonship of Christ and to anyone looking to dig in deeper on this subject within the framework of the nuances of the Advent Movement, The Heavenly Trio will make for some rich and thought-provoking reading.

Jared Thurmon, Marketing and Strategic Partnerships, Adventist Review

Contents

01 ONE QUESTION TO RULE THEM ALL

02 The Core Concern of the Pioneers

03 Ellen White’s Trinitarian Journey

04 A Gateway to Pantheism

05 Covenantal Trinitarianism

06 The Covenant Communicator

07 MEDIATOR OF THE Eternal COVENANT

08 A Necessary Equality

09 The Covenant Negated

10 The Covenant Community

“Is power or love ultimate with God? Answer that one question aright, and we have the answer to all worthwhile questions.”

CHAPTER ONE

ONE QUESTION TO RULE THEM ALL

George MacDonald, the nineteenth-century Scottish preacher, places before us one question, the answer to which, sets the foundation for answering every other worthwhile question:

Is power or love the making might of the universe? He who answers this question aright has the key to all righteous questions. George MacDonald, England’s Antiphon (1868)

What an ingeniously simple and yet profound perceptual lens for making sense out of . . . well . . . pretty much everything.

Personally, I don’t think MacDonald’s bold claim is an exaggeration. It certainly does appear that there are only two possible ways to conceive of ultimate reality and the God behind it. Either power or love, as he put it, is “the making might,” or the creative force, that defines the universe and the character of the God that created it.

I can’t think of a third option.

Building on MacDonald’s idea, I would suggest that the same holds true with regards to belief systems. Every doctrine we humans formulate is traceable to either a premise of power or love. If “God is love” (1 John 4:8), it logically follows that every true doctrine would expound upon God’s love and every false doctrine would in some manner diminish love in favor of power.

Yes, God is powerful. The Bible says God is the “Almighty” (Genesis 17:1; Revelation 1:8). We rightfully employ the word “omnipotent” to describe God. And yet, even omnipotence has its limitations, extremely significant limitations, in fact. There are things that even Almighty God can’t do. The Bible itself names at least four of them:

God “cannot lie” (Titus 1:2), as opposed to will not.

God “cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13), which is to say, God cannot not be exactly who He is in character. God is unalterably true to His identity.

God “cannot be tempted by evil” (James 1:13).

And God cannot save a person that chooses to be lost, as much as He would like to (2 Peter 3:9).

C.S. Lewis explains the idea like this:

His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,” you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, “God can.” It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

We make a huge theological blunder when we turn omnipotence into omni-control. Exhaustive control within the context of free moral agency would necessarily entail coercion. If there is anything that Almighty God doesn’t want, it’s control. God possesses all power and yet does not employ all of His power to always get His way. The moment we equate omnipotence with omni-control, we need to reckon with the fact that love and coercion are mutually exclusive. They simply cannot simultaneously occupy the same relational space. To conceive of God as possessing absolute control is to eliminate any meaningful conceptions of love from our vision of reality.

The point is both simple and profound: for God, love is ultimate, not power.

God has power.

God is love.

And all the power God has is employed toward the exercise of the love God is.

Within God’s essential makeup, God’s abilities serve God’s character, not the other way around.

Love only occurs by the voluntary crossing of the neutral space that lies between an individual free self and an equally free other. If the essence of God’s identity is love, it follows that God does not employ force in His quest to establish a relationship with us. Implicit to the biblical idea that “God is love,” is the idea of divine self-limitation: God cannot control those whom He would have love Him. If love is the desired end, the sheer power of force cannot be the means of its attainment. This is why the biblical narrative portrays God as restraining His power in favor of wooing, drawing, alluring, calling, and pleading:

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth. Isaiah 45:22, NIV

The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Jeremiah 31:3

Behold, I will allure her. Hosea 2:14

I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. John 12:32

How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Matthew 23:37

For the love of Christ compels us . . . that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. . . . Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 20

So, yes, God can do anything—any thing. “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). But it does not logically follow that with God all non-things are possible. God can do anything except what lies logically outside of the realm of possibility—like creating two adjacent mountains with no valley between, or creating existing things that don’t exist, or causing love to exist in the heart of a free agent who chooses not to love. Or—reaching all the way to the very foundation of reality itself—God cannot be love without someone to love, in as much as love entails other-centeredness. God cannot be love unless God, as God, is composed of both self and other. That is to say, if God is and always has been love, then God necessarily is a social dynamic of some configuration that includes both selfhood and otherness.

And this brings us to the subject at hand.

Turn God into an absolute, solitary self, and any coherent notion of love will necessarily vanish from your theology, and all you will have left is some sort of impersonal power. I insert the word coherent in that sentence, because, yes, you could arbitrarily declare that “God is love” in the midst of your insistence that God is a solitary self, but contradictions would quickly ensue. Without knowing God as a relational dynamic of more than one person, the premise that “God is love” vanishes up the theological chimney in smoke. At that point, another foundational premise must necessarily be put in the place of love, and the only premise remaining is power.

In the pages that follow, we will explore the implications that emerge from the theological premise, in its anti-trinitarian form, that God is a solitary self. We will also explore, by contrast, the implications of a social theology of God, which we will call “Covenantal Trinitarianism,” for reasons that will become beautifully evident as we proceed.

This book is titled, The Heavenly Trio. It is a follow-up to my previous release, The Sonship of Christ, which explored the identity of Jesus as “the Son of God.” In that study we engaged in what we called “an Old Testament reading of the New Testament,” allowing the Hebrew narrative of Moses and the prophets to tell us what the apostles mean when they say that Jesus is “the Son of God.” While Sonship was written for a wide audience of Bible students from all denominational backgrounds, Trio offers perspectives of specific interest to Seventh-day Adventists. It explores the anti-trinitarian views of the founding pioneers of the Advent movement, as well as the view developed by Ellen White, who is regarded as a prophetic voice to the Advent movement.

First, we will identify “The Core Concern of the Pioneers.” Prepare yourself for a major Aha! moment as we discover what these early Bible students of Adventism were really getting at with their pushback on the Trinity. It is generally acknowledged that the Advent pioneers were anti-trinitarian, but little attention has been given to the specific concern they expressed. If we pay attention to the particular nature of their concern, it becomes evident that the Seventh-day Adventist Church arrived at its present trinitarian position, not in spite of the pioneers, but as the inevitable outworking of their concern. The pioneers were Bible students in process. The development of theology takes time, so the pioneers were not without blind spots. But as honest searchers for truth, they were eager to learn. Notwithstanding their blind spots, I will suggest, they pointed the church in the right direction and thus contributed to the formation of the current doctrine of God held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

After this, we will examine “Ellen White’s Trinitarian Journey.” We will see that Ellen White, while surrounded by anti-trinitarian brothers whom she held in high regard, refrained from making any anti-trinitarian declarations herself. More significantly, she discerned the legitimacy of the specific concern her brothers were articulating, while steering clear of the deep problems that lay just beneath the surface of their anti-trinitarian views. As a result, Ellen White formulated a rich trinitarian picture of God that was grounded in the individual personhood of each member of the Godhead, based on an awareness of the covenantal nature of God. In this chapter we will also discover how the anti-trinitarian doctrine lends itself to pantheism.1 This is a connection Ellen White discerned and addressed. I realize this is a provocative proposition, but once we put the pieces in place, I am confident you will find it persuasive.

Next, we will pan out historically to consider in greater detail how anti-trinitarian theology can be “A Gateway to Pantheism.” The world is full of belief systems. This chapter suggests that almost every belief system can be seen as fundamentally Hebrew or Greek in its orientation to reality. From the Hebrew lineage of thought, we receive a covenantal vision of God—relational, free, open, dynamic, empathic. From the Greek philosophers, we receive a monistic depiction of God—solitary, fixed, closed, absolute. Yes, the history of ideas is a little messier than these two categories encompass, but much of what’s going on in the human psyche is explainable within the dichotomy that exists between Hebrew and Greek frameworks.

Having gained a working knowledge of Hebrew and Greek thought, we will offer a brief history of God under the title, “Covenantal Trinitarianism.” Our goal here will be to allow the Hebrew Scriptures to form our picture of God, noticing how beautifully, delightfully, and convincingly different this picture is from the Greek view.

Next, we will delve into the vital biblical truth of mediation, which opens our understanding to the activity of God within human history prior to the incarnation of Christ. Titling this chapter, “The Covenant Communicator,” we will examine two Old Testament revelations that depict God as always communicating in love to all human beings within the realm of our thoughts and feelings.

Furthering our exploration of mediation, the next chapter is titled, “Mediator of the Eternal Covenant.” Here we will encounter within the biblical narrative the presence of Two Yahwehs, one in heaven and invisible to human sight, the other actively engaged on earth in a visible form.

In the chapter, “A Necessary Equality,” we will see how knowing God as an indivisible social unit of other-centered love vitally informs our understanding of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary. If, in the final analysis, God is believed to be a solitary self, the death of Jesus on the cross can only be thought of as the ultimate act of self-centeredness on the part of a God for whom self-sacrifice is impossible.

Once we’ve wrapped our minds around the covenantal equality of Christ with the Father, in the “The Covenant Negated” we will be able to discern by contrast that the anti-trinitarian doctrine constitutes a fundamentally hierarchical picture of God and of human relationships. To our astonishment, we will discover that hierarchical structures do not reflect the ideal relational maturity to which the new covenant calls us in Christ.

Finally, we will reflect upon the church of Christ as “The Covenant Community.” It will become evident that our picture of God inevitably impacts our understanding of what the church is and how Christ calls it to function in the world.

All in all, in the following pages, we will discover that there really is only one question to rule them all.

Is power or love ultimate with God?

Answer that one question aright, and we have the answer to all worthwhile questions.

1 A doctrine in which God and the physical universe are synonymous, meaning that God is not a personal being that exists distinct from the universe.

“The current position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is true to the core concern of the early Advent pioneers and we are indebted to them for pointing us in the right direction.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Core Concern of the Pioneers

The Seventh-day Adventist Church was launched in the mid-1800’s by a group of people composed mostly of teenagers and young adults from a variety of denominational backgrounds. Most of them were participants in what was known as the Millerite Movement, led by the Baptist preacher William Miller. They believed that the second coming of Christ would occur in October of 1844. When Christ did not come, the Millerites experienced what came to be known as “The Great Disappointment,” which, if you think about it, is an extreme understatement. They were emotionally crushed.

Emerging from the painful and humiliating ordeal, a core group of believers continued to passionately study the Bible together. Because they were from various denominational quarters, their theology was a mixed bag of different perspectives. But they all had at least one thing in common: they didn’t want to mindlessly follow any ecclesiastical creed. They were fired up about stripping all assumptions away and studying the Bible for themselves. All they wanted was to humbly search the pages of Scripture to discover its unadulterated teachings. They were a group of theological nerds with a minimalist orientation on a quest to steer clear of imposed belief systems. “The Bible, and the Bible alone,” was their only creed.

This process of personal and group study gradually produced a general consensus of shared beliefs on a handful of theological issues. The group discovered exciting and powerful biblical truths that had been lost sight of during the Dark Ages. Eventually, these believers became known as “Seventh-day Adventists,” due to their belief in the seventh day as God’s Sabbath and their cherished hope in the second coming of Christ.

A Specific Concern

This diverse group of Bible students, as would be expected, had divergent views on various theological topics. The majority of these individuals, who would later be regarded as the “pioneers” of the Advent movement, were semi-Arian.1 That is, they believed Christ was in some manner brought into existence by the Father. Therefore, they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. But, as we will discover, they rejected a specific framing of the Trinity doctrine, and did so for a particular reason. Following the specific concern of the Advent pioneers to its logical conclusion, we will see that the Seventh-day Adventist Church eventually rejected Arianism and adopted a theologically rich version of trinitarianism that answered the concern of the pioneers.