Decoding Jesus
A Comparison between John Calvin and Ellen G. White’s Views
Dr. PP Jones, Th.D
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Dedication
I dedicate this book to the entire International Community, especially the Church of Christ. This is in honor and commemoration of the late President Nelson Mandela. Although Mr. Mandela did not publicly profess to be a Christian, the major ideals he had internalized and epitomized through his life, are in concert and symphonic harmony with the meandering stream flowing through this book—creation, reconciliation, renewal and fulfillment.
Preface
What is Decoding Jesus about? While the world around us is cluttered with records concerning Jesus—this book—is not just one of the many. In a world of internet speeds that are immensely fast, lingering unobtrusive drones replacing fast flying jets, fast paced wavelike changes in global economics making the rich richer and the poor poorer, competing churches losing members in droves, politics polluted by entrenched self-interest and populations polarized to the hilt—Jesus remains one of the most intriguing, fascinating and controversial ‘topics’ of all times.
Many in secularized societies, especially those currently in the Western world, may often feel repulsed to any reference of Christianity or Christians in general. The reasons are overwhelmingly many. Some of these reasons stretch from outdated packages of the Christian message that is not liberating to people’s already dreadful existence to scandals involving many in the Christian world. For many the whole story of religion does not make sense. Notwithstanding these and other reasons, a large portion of people in secularized societies, while they may not be attracted to Christians, their churches and their messages, they are nevertheless attracted to the man of Galilee—Jesus.
In various segments of the modern world, marketers know that Jesus sells, as long as the package in which he is provided is cleverly presented. The world of Hollywood also knows that. Mel Gibson made an instant billion US dollars with his acclaimed movie The Passion of Christ. Prolific writers know that the story of Jesus carries a fascinating mystery in itself. It is in this regard that Dan Brown tapped into the wide spread interest into the mystery of Jesus. He purportedly moved many people’s minds with the publishing of his controversial Da Vinci Code. Conclusion—one can become a billionaire by pretending to decipher the mystery of Jesus as long as the book is well written and impressively thick. Millions of people are still interested.
What emerges in this book, not as thick as the learned tomes of many, is a deciphering of who Jesus is in the practicalities of our lives and the practicalities of the life of God. Jesus fits as a driving force into the threesome of God, human beings and the natural cosmic world. In this sense as part of the threesome of God, human beings and the natural cosmic world, Jesus comes to the fore in the grand acts of God in the Judeo-Christian Bible depicted as creation, reconciliation (the cross and the resurrection), renewal (the Holy Spirit at Pentecost) and fulfillment at the end of times.
The method of my enquiry is through a careful comparative analytical study of Ellen G. White and John Calvin. Why I chose John Calvin and Ellen G. White as comparative partners in Decoding Jesus—is why you should embark with me on this journey.
The project began while I was a student at Oakwood University in Huntsville Alabama, in the fall of 1994. It grew into something thicker and fuller when I had to write a paper at Southern Adventist University, Tennessee in 1998. More mature and fulfilling it became—while I was pursuing my Master and Doctor degrees in systematic theology, through the University of South Africa from 1999-2010. Thereafter, I continued probing and delving yet deeper and incessantly on who, Jesus really is and how he relates to God, human beings and the natural created environment.
Ellen White paradoxically—like Jesus—is a subject of controversy within the global landscape of the churches. Some call her a prophet, while others claim that she was just a devotional writer and someone engaged in practicing everyday faith experience. What is astonishing is that none call her a theologian. In this book, we discover that White, like Calvin—not regarded as a real theologian by many—had a systematic way of doing theology in the drawing patterns of faith about God, human beings and the natural created environment within the broad ambience of the biblical historical timeline. White’s way of doing theology was an anti-speculative approach using the Judeo-Christian Bible as an ambience in which she herself was closely engaged in her reflection on God, human beings and the natural created cosmos. This engagement in experiential faith patterns is what she has written down and worked out in her writings. The name that commentators gave to Calvin’s writings as pastoral dogmatics could very aptly be attached to White’s writings. White’s contribution to the global theological scene is far more unique and surprising than what people inside and outside the Seventh Day Adventist world would acknowledge.
Prologue
Some people may ask the question, why would one discuss and compare John Calvin—the major trendsetter and co-founder of the large group of mainline Reformed churches with a controversial and nonconformist, Ellen G. White, the main trendsetter and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, that is still regarded by many as a church on the fringes of the global mainline church landscape. It is common knowledge to Calvinists and Seventh Day Adventists that the 16th century John Calvin and the 19th century Ellen G. White, living almost three hundred years apart, generally held very divergent points of view. What is not well known is that they have been sharing similar views in vital parts of their approaches.
One of the major characteristics they shared is their continuous defiance of the scholastics’ speculative way of reflection and contemplation about God, human beings and the whole of creation. Calvin and White used the Judeo-Christian Bible from Genesis to Revelation as their main ambience of reflection, their main expanded spatial bubble of reflection about God, human beings and the entire created cosmos. They both shunned speculation outside the dynamics of the biblical historical timeline in which they traced the four grand acts, that is the operational dimensions of God: creation; reconciliation (Redemption - the cross and resurrection); renewal (The Holy Spirit at Pentecost) and fulfillment (The final consummation or end of time). While Calvin emphasized the first two more: creation and reconciliation (the cross and resurrection), White’s approach is more dynamically extended to all four: creation; reconciliation; renewal and fulfillment.
Along the journey we undertake, the ‘Trinity’ is dealt with in passing, as one of the center point around which many discussions revolve. Later on we alarmingly notice how Calvin experienced problems in his employment of the historical timeline of the Bible as his main ambience of reflection on God’s grand acts around which the threesome of God, human beings and the cosmic world continuously revolve. He also contradictorily held on to the traditional speculative dogma of the Trinity with its speculative overtones of a trinitarian God acting above God’s grand acts. Ellen G. White wrote over 100,000 transcribed pages set in periodical articles, typewritten manuscripts consisting of letters and documents and tracts and letters that were handwritten in journals. Her voluminous-writings comprise more than 130 books currently in print. Yet strangely enough, —in the vast sea of her writings—the word—‘Trinity’—is missing. In all of her voluminous work she almost bypasses the discussion of the Trinity. Later on towards the end of her life she seemingly makes a careful ‘U-turn’ but still—did not mention the word ‘Trinity.’ The furthest she went was to make mention of ‘the three living persons of the heavenly trio.’ In this work, her conspicuous omission of the old edged word ‘Trinity’ and by-passing of the traditional notion of the Trinity, could be regarded as a smoking gun!
In Decoding Jesus we deal with: how Jesus could be both God and man? If he was omnipresent as God is, how could he have left heaven and be contained in a virgin’s womb? What happened to his divinity at the incarnation? When he was of adolescent age or at any other time, did he use his divine power to benefit himself to be of better advantage over other humans? What happened to his divinity when he calmed the storm at The Sea of Galilee? What was his divinity doing when he made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem? And what happened to his divinity while he was dying on the cross of Golgotha? What happened to his humanity after he had risen and ascended to heaven? Where is his human nature, now? What will happen to his human nature in eternity?
During the cause of our journey, we notice that Calvin and White’s Christological method of allowing ‘God to stay God’ and ‘humans to stay human’ in an interactional substantialist
sense in Christ, denotes a divergent view from the trans-substantialist view (historically linked to the Roman Catholic Church) in which the human Jesus is in a sacramental-sacred way transformed into ‘a divine human being.’ Calvin and White’s interactional-substantialist view also differed from the Lutheran consubstantialist view, whereby the human Jesus is permeated and diffused by his divinity, therefore becoming ‘the human God.’ It is of interest here that the majority of evangelical Christians in the world without knowing tend to follow the ‘divine Jesus nestled in the heart view’ that derives more from Luther than from Calvin’s views. In White’s view of the identity of the dual natures of Jesus Christ, it is revealed that we sometimes see his quiescent divinity (allowing more of his humanness to show) and at other times his active divinity (allowing more of his divine nature to be revealed).
On quite a number of important points emphasized in the global array of mainline church theologies White’s faith studies are an immense contribution, demonstrating that it is not always the mighty world of the recognized big theologians that annunciate the changes of an era—but the seemingly powerless on the edges—reads sometimes the signs of changes of an era far better.
Contents
Chapter 1: Concrete Biblical Reflection or Speculative Theologizing?
1.1 The First Problem Setting: God’s Grand Acts of Creation, Reconciliation, Renewal, and Fulfillment Open to Biblical Reflection or Speculative Theologizing?
1.2 The Second Problem Setting: The Nature and Centrality of Christ’s Reconciliation in the Array of the Grand Acts of God
Chapter 2: God’s Grand Acts as Divine History Embedded in the Bible
2.1 God’s Grand Acts Open to Biblical Reflection or Speculative Theologizing?
2.1.1 Introduction
2.1.2 Calvin’s and White’s Challenges
2.2 Dialectics, Scholastics, and Speculative Theology
2.2.1 Scholastic and Speculative Theology
2.2.2 Calvin’s Double-Sided Dialectic
2.2.3 Hegelian Dialectic
2.2.4 White’s Dialectic
2.3 The Origins of the Trinity Notion and the Biblical Historical Timeline
2.3.1 Introduction
2.3.2 Calvin and the Trinitarian Problem
2.3.3 White and the Trinitarian Problem
2.4 Epilogue
Chapter 3: The Centrality of God’s Grand Act of Reconciliation in Jesus Christ
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 The First Access Area: Interactional Substantialism
3.1.2 The Second Access Area: Perpetual Mediatorship
3.1.3 The Third Access Area
3.2 Jesus Christ: Dual Nature
3.2.1 Calvin on Christ’s Dual Nature
3.2.2 White on Christ’s Dual Nature
3.3 Christ’s Identity as Mediator and Substitution
3.3.1 Calvin’s View of Christ As Perpetual Kingly Priest and Mediator
3.3.2 White’s View of Christ as Perpetual Priestly Conqueror and as Mediator
3.4 The Interactive Exchange of the Roles of Divinity and Humanity of Christ
3.4.1 Quiescent Divinity versus Active Divinity
3.4.2 Interactional Substantialism While Dying at Golgotha
3.5 Titles, Offices and Dimensions of Christ’s Identity
3.5.1 Calvin’s View of Christ’s Multidimensionality
3.5.2 White’s View of Christ Multidimensional Ministering
3.6 The Second Coming of Christ
3.6.1 Calvin’s Scriptural Exclusivity of Prophecy on the Second Coming
3.6.2 White’s Historicalness of Prophecy Regarding the Second Coming
3.7 Summary of Interactional Substantialism
3.8 Monolithic Mono- and Dual-Substantialist View of Decoding Jesus
3.8.1 First Millennium Mono- and Dual-Substantialist Views
3.8.2 Modern Liberal Monolithic Substantialism
3.9 Transformational Substantialism
3.10 Consubstantialism
3.11 Epilogue
References
CHAPTER 1
Concrete Biblical Reflection or Speculative Theologizing?
1.1 The First Problem Setting: God’s Grand Acts of Creation, Reconciliation, Renewal, and Fulfillment Open to Biblical Reflection or Speculative Theologizing?
In the first problem setting, John Calvin and Ellen G. White’s operational uses of God’s grand acts of creation, reconciliation (redemption), renewal, and fulfillment (consummation), as embodied in the salvation-historical corpus of the biblical texts from Genesis to Revelation, is investigated and portrayed. This kind of salvation-historical approach embodied in their writings, sayings, and doings revolves around a divine history embedded in the portrayal of the whole array of God’s grand acts in the Judeo-Christian Bible, with God as the all-initiating agent. This divine history is of such a special kind that all of world history outside the biblical depiction of divine history is reliant on the biblical rendition of real and genuine history.
An outstanding feature of their kind of theology is that they continuously connect and describe in their concrete reflection and discussion the threesome of God, human beings, and the natural cosmic environment in each of God’s grand acts portrayed as divine history in the Judeo-Christian Bible. Their concrete kind of faith patterning and theorizing is way beyond the theologies of medieval scholastics and modern orthodoxy, which discuss and reflect on God while underemphasizing the discussion and reflection on human beings and the natural cosmic environment. The great theologies of medieval scholastics and modern orthodoxy not only underemphasize the domains of human beings and the natural environment, but they fully endorsed the ancient philosophical threesome of God, human beings, and the natural environment to be portrayed as separate and divided avenues of reflection and discussion. In this separated and divided sense, the reflection in the theological avenue of discussion revolved around the notions of faith and love closely and directly linked to God. In the anthropological avenue of human beings and cosmological avenue of nature, the reflection was done in the embrace of human reason and common sense remotely and indirectly linked to God. Superseding this separated and divided scheme, Calvin and White continually emphasize the simultaneous close connection and radical difference between God, human beings, and the natural cosmic environment in their reflection and discussion of divine history portrayed in the Bible.
One possible reason why Calvin and White were not regarded as theologians in the classical mound is their insistence on treating God, human beings, and nature as a “reflexive coherence” within the realm of biblically portrayed divine history. It is significant that they do not have separate anthropologies or cosmologies. Calvin and White’s dealings with divine history as portrayed in the Bible are expressed in their writings, sayings, and doings, and in their intrinsic aversion to go beyond and above the divinely set range of the grand acts of God. What could generally be described as their salvation-historical approaches comprise the divinely set range of biblically portrayed grand acts of God continuously enveloped in the mystery of the close connection and radical difference of God, human beings, and the natural cosmic environment.
This notion deals with the difference between the essence-seeking approach of scholastic and orthodox types of theology and Calvin and White’s salvation-historical approach in which theological reflection is conducted by following the sequence of God’s grand acts of creation, reconciliation, renewal, and fulfillment, as portrayed by the biblical texts from Genesis to Revelation. Calvin and White, while differing in many respects, have one major thing in common, and that is not to follow the typical scholastic theological approach of speculating about the essences of God, human beings, and nature as separate entities above and outside God’s grand acts as portrayed in the Bible. Moreover, it is significant that they also do not make use of scholasticism’s bifocal speculative treatment of reflecting in an either/or way on the “inside” and “outside” of God, human beings, or the natural cosmic world. Although, when they discuss God or an aspect of God, human beings, and nature, they do not always explicitly carry the same weight of God in their reflections.
The notion of the Trinity is another case in point. The question with regard to Calvin is how a Trinitarian God who operates beyond the grand acts of God’s creation, reconciliation, renewal, and fulfillment could be combined, harmonized, and radically built into these grand acts. In Calvin’s writings, sayings, and doings, the notion of the Trinity plays a less important role than his main reflexive realms of creation and redemption covered and undergirded by his divine salvation storyline. Interestingly, the notion of the Trinity is an intrinsic part of the scholastic speculative approach. In the past early centuries, problems with the notion of a Trinitarian God emerged in various theological avenues. The result of the latter was an awareness of increasing problems with the notion of the Trinity that spilled over into the Reformed and Presbyterian world. Various new approaches to problems in the sixteenth-century Reformation and Calvin’s work are detected—one of which is a seeming contradiction between his acceptance of the notion of the Trinity and his strong emphasis on the divine history embedded in the grand acts of God as depicted in the Bible. It looks increasingly certain that Calvin was not able to let the notion of a Trinitarian God collapse with his salvation-historical constructed realms of creation and reconciliation, which follow the time and history line of divine history embedded in the Bible.
White does not come close to Calvin’s acceptance of the orthodox and scholastic notion of a Trinity; in fact, it appears as if the Trinitarian notion of God more or less totally disappeared from her works. Various of my fellow Seventh-day Adventist theologians toying with the idea of coming in line with the widely accepted doctrine of the Trinity, as accepted by the majority of churches, look at White’s views as stemming, in part, from a lack of understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, during the formative years of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination in the nineteenth century.
Some early Seventh-day Adventist leaders believed the doctrine to be unscriptural and absurd (Bates n.d., 204-205; White, J 1852, 52). The personhood of the Holy Spirit proved to be even more difficult to understand and articulate. In all her writings, White never used the term, “Trinity,” although she did refer to the “three living persons of the heavenly trio” (White [1946] 1970, 615). Her comments suggest that she believed that the Scriptures taught the existence of three co-eternal divine persons (613-617). In the current debate, a large group of theologians in the Seventh-day Adventist world espouse strong Trinitarian views, which they undergird with statements from White’s later writings, sayings, and doings from 1890 until her death in 1915.
What these fellow theologians do not realize is that one cannot operate with the classical view of a Trinitarian God in its most significant Latin formulation of Deus est Trinitas, portraying God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and yet also operate with White’s notion of the humanity of the Son of God blended with his divinity in continuation until the infinity of eternity as the eternal high priest in the heavenly sanctuary. Calvin, an avowed supporter of only divine persons in the Trinity—the Deus est Trinitas doctrine—connected the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, so closely to his humanity in his notion of an extra-calvinisticum that Christ’s resurrected humanity currently in “heaven” stays closely connected to his divinity at the right-hand side of the Father until the infinity of eternity (Van Niekerk 2009b, 36). Later on, we will see that at some distant part of eternity, Christ, according to Calvin, will assume his original pre-incarnation status as being only divine. Calvin’s whole pastoral dogmatic approach of operating with the grand acts of creation and reconciliation, albeit with lesser emphasis on God’s grand acts of renewal and fulfillment at the deepest level, does not correspond with the classical doctrine of a Trinitarian God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
White’s hesitation to pry and inquire intrusively into the essence of God as God-self, as demonstrated in her total underemphasizing, not to say bypassing, of the doctrine of the Trinity with all its speculative elements, should be treasured by Seventh-day Adventists as part of her high respect for the range of God’s grand acts, which express her view of divine history embodied and embedded in the salvation-historical trajectory of the Bible. In reflecting on God, human beings, or the natural world, White stays within the demarcated biblical historical timeline. She connects in her reflection on the Godhead “heavenly history” and “earthly history” so closely together that Christ speaks to Moses at the burning bush:
When we approach the subject of . . . divinity . . . we may appropriately heed the words spoken by Christ to Moses at the burning bush, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” We must come to the study of this subject with the humility of a learner with a contrite heart (White [1953] 1985a, 348-349).
It is important that the large group of my fellow Seventh-day Adventist theologians who strongly advocate the Deus est Trinitas, as the view of the mature White, should be more involved in the current debate in the global theological world in which the notion of the Trinity is skeptically viewed as a fourth-century doctrinal artifact mainly devised under the influence of politicians at the ecumenical councils of the first millennium. Furthermore, while experience has demonstrated that the doctrine of the Trinity has very little impact in the lives and practical daily experience of Christians, White’s emphasis on the grand acts of God as divine history embodied and embedded in the Bible should be embraced and employed as reflexive faith tools for a new way of doing concrete theology. Moreover, her reflexive coherence of faith patterning within the realms of the divine historical timeline of the Bible, especially in the first half of her life, should be opened up and extended, instead of being viewed as lacking in understanding the doctrine of the Trinity.
1.2 The Second Problem Setting: The Nature and Centrality of Christ’s Reconciliation in the Array of the Grand Acts of God
One of the main challenges of this book is to describe the centrality of Christ within the range of God’s acts of creation, reconciliation, renewal, and fulfillment. Calvin and White reflect on the mystery of the simultaneity of the close connection and radical difference of God, human beings, and the natural cosmic world in all the grand acts of God that is creation, reconciliation (redemption), renewal, and consummation (fulfillment). In the divine history embodied and embedded in the salvation-historical trajectory of the grand acts of God’s salvation, redemption, and reconciliation in Jesus Christ, his cross, his resurrection, and intercession stand absolutely central in both Calvin’s and White’s view, stretching back to creation and forward to the final consummation and projected eternal bliss.
However, White contributed a slightly different view on Christ as mediator. While White does acknowledge a sequence of change of Christ’s office from that of priest/ mediator currently to that of the Coming Triumphant King, which is similar to that of Calvin’s stance, more than Calvin, White depicts Christ as a perpetual mediator between divinity and humanity after the fulfilling consummation. In other words, regardless of the different phases of offices of mediator and king, which are both present in Calvin’s and White’s Christology (like Calvin, White does acknowledge a distinct cessation of the office of mediator), the difference is that White takes the mediating aspect of Christ throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity. Although, it must be mentioned that White does not imply that there will be a mediation of the sort that Christ is currently engaged in. She clearly states, by quoting the apostle John in Revelation 21:22 and by her further statement that there will be no more sin, that there will be no temple in the preceding life, and therefore, no veil between the redeemed people and God (White [1888] 1990a, 676-678). The difference here is embedded in White’s view of the limitation that Christ has assumed by taking upon himself the human nature. To White, this perpetual retention of the human nature is a form of an everlasting mediation or a representation of humanity within the realm of divinity. This perpetual mediation makes it possible for an eternal guarantee of partnership since both parties are represented in the centrality of Christ in God’s grand acts of creation, redemption, renewal, and consummation.
According to White, Christ has always been the mediator of the covenant from the past of eternity to the future of eternity (White [1953] 1985, 441). White, sticking close to the Judeo-Christian Bible in reflecting on its timeline assumingly with the mindset of Hebrews 7:1-3, portrays Christ’s continued perpetual mediation after its official cessation according to the heavenly sanctuary’s ministration. Once the officiating work is complete in the heavenly sanctuary, according to White, there will be no mediator for the righteous living, who will be awaiting the Second Coming of Christ. In this regard, White says:
When he leaves the sanctuary, darkness covers the inhabitants of the earth. In that fearful time, the righteous must live in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor (White [1888] 1990a, 614).
Morris Venden, Seventh-day Adventist pastor and author, in his book, Never Without an Intercessor (1996, 57-69), explains what the latter statement by White means. According to Venden, there is no such a thing as the righteous ever being able to live at any time without an intercessor since the human being has always been and will always be dependent upon Christ and God. What emerges in Venden’s reading of White’s statement is the conspicuous clarity of the statement. White’s statement in a broader context reads as follows:
When He [Christ] leaves the sanctuary, darkness covers the inhabitants of the earth. In that fearful time, the righteous must live in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor. The restraint which has been upon the wicked is removed, and Satan has entire control of the finally impenitent. God’s long-suffering has ended. The world has rejected His mercy, despised His love, and trampled upon His law. The wicked have passed the boundary of their probation; the Spirit of God, persistently resisted, has been at last withdrawn. Unsheltered by divine grace, they have no protection from the wicked one. Satan will then plunge the inhabitants of the earth into one great, final trouble. As the angels of God cease to hold in check the fierce winds of human passion, all the elements of strife will be let loose. The whole world will be involved in ruin more terrible than that which came upon Jerusalem of old . . . The same destructive power exercised by holy angels when God commands, will be exercised by evil angels when He permits. There are forces now ready, and only waiting the divine permission, to spread desolation everywhere (White [1888] 1990a, 614).
According to Venden (1996, 67), the above passage deals with God’s intercession and intervention manifesting God’s prevention of the world from collapsing into a disastrous, inhabitable dungeon of chaos. In this regard, Venden states:
When this world no longer has an intercessor against Satan, and the four winds are let loose, all hell breaks loose. That’s what it means when both the righteous and the wicked will live without an intercessor (Venden 1996, 67).
With the afore said in mind, it should therefore suffice to say that Christ’s mediation, though temporarily may be deemed absent, as he will allow for the angels of destruction to do their work, will continue, since his priesthood is forever, in and after the order of Melchizedek. Hence, Christ’s mediation and priesthood continues as a different phase of priesthood/mediation since there will be no temple or sanctuary, nor will there be any sin, which can be deciphered from White’s emphatic suggestion of the retention of Christ’s human nature into eternity:
When God would assure us of His immutable counsel of peace, He gives His only begotten Son to become one of the human family, forever to retain His human nature as a pledge that God will fulfill His word . . . Man’s substitute and surety must have man’s nature, a connection with the human family whom He was to represent, and, as God’s ambassador, He must partake of the divine nature, have a connection with the Infinite, in order to manifest God to the world, and be a mediator between God and man (White [1953] 1985a, 488).
This is a divergent view from Calvin, who regarded the office of mediation as transitory. Unlike White, who viewed the limitation that Christ has imposed upon himself by assuming the human nature to be perpetual and thereby rendering himself to be subservient and obsequious to God, Calvin deemed the mediation and submission of Christ to God only to be transient:
Christ, therefore, shall reign until he appear to judge the world, inasmuch as, according to the measure of our feeble capacity, he now connects us with the Father. But when, as partakers of the heavenly glory, we shall see God as he is, then Christ, having accomplished the office of Mediator, shall cease to be the vicegerent of the Father, and will be content with the glory which he possessed before the world was . . . God will then cease to be the head of Christ, and Christ’s own Godhead will then shine forth of itself, whereas it is now in a manner veiled (Calvin [1989] 2001b, 418).
It appears here that as far as Calvin is concerned, Christ’s humanity, which serves to veil his divinity, will expire at some point of eternity. The reflection in this problem area revolves around the nature and the centrality of Jesus Christ in the views of Calvin and White. The reflexive discussion, on one hand, has to do with how and where does Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection fit into the grand acts of God’s creation; God’s reconciliation circumscribed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; God’s renewal through Pentecost; and God’s consummation and fulfillment of all things, culminating in the new heaven and the new earth. On the other hand, the reflexive discussion points in the direction of the nature and role of Jesus Christ in God’s central act of reconciliation, redemption, and salvation.
The first dimension is thus a concentration of the discussion on the concept of the how, what, and where, and the role and function of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection from beginning to end within God’s grand acts as portrayed in the Bible. The second dimension deals with the question of whether we are referring to the realness of events and factual quality, and the historical and material quality of realness of the reconciliation, redemption, and salvation in Jesus Christ. The problem is how are Calvin and White perceiving Jesus Christ’s humanity in being born a human to be closely connected and an equal partner to his divinity? After he had condescended into our world, what actually happened to his divinity? Did Jesus cease to be an active person in God, who is a participant in the affairs of the universe from beginning to end, while he was on earth as a human being? The other side of this question is whether he ceased to be divine at his death on the hills of Golgotha.
Both Calvin and White follow the path of the salvation-historical realness and factuality of reconciliation and salvation, embracing human beings and the natural cosmic world in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As a matter of necessity in being complete in what is investigated, different approaches are dealt with while one approach of interactional substantialism on the divinity and humanity of Christ detected in the writings of Calvin and White is treated as the main approach from which the others are measured and evaluated.
In this work, both the differences and overlapping between Calvin’s and White’s views are investigated. Ivan T. Blazen, writing on the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of the doctrine of salvation, said:
Seventh-day Adventists see themselves as heirs of and builders upon the Reformation insights into biblical teaching on justification by grace through faith alone, and restorers and exponents of the fullness, clarity, and balance of the apostolic Gospel (Blazen 2000, 307).
Jesus Christ is mysteriously divine and human from his pre-existence, which proceeds through his life, cross, and resurrection to his post-existence. Two notions emerged in this approach that the other three approaches did not have. First, Jesus Christ mysteriously acted out his divineness sometimes and other times more his humanness in his life, death, and resurrection. Second, in a mysterious way, Jesus Christ’s divinity and humanity stay together beyond the limiting notions of his pre-existence before “the virgin birth” and his post-existence on “the right hand side of the Father” in “heaven.”
A first of the well-known approaches in Christianity revolves around the idea of transformational trans-substantialism, the humanity of Christ is sacramentally transformed by his divinity. The main Roman Catholic sacramentalist position in which Jesus Christ is seen as the divine human being in salvation is representative of this approach. Jesus Christ is the divine human being, who was the pre-existent divine Son of God, transforming the humanity of Jesus through a virgin birth into that of a sacramentalized and sacralized divine human being. This divine human being had proceeded exclusively from heaven as the divine Son of God and continues to live into his post-existence through the resurrection and the ascension in his body the Church. The limiting notion of the incarnation in this approach means that the pre-existent divine Son of God had been clothed with divinized human flesh while he was on earth. This means that the risen Son of God, who is now on the right hand side of the Father, has left behind his creaturely human flesh and is solely divine. Though this view is not propagated in current Roman Catholic theologies, it is still strongly operational in Roman Catholic ecclesial practices and sacraments from baptism to the Eucharist.
A second approach revolves around the notion of the divinity of Christ permeating his humanity, as expressed by the consubstantialist approach. This position has very old papers in the history of Christianity, but was given its final format by Luther and the Lutheran tradition by portraying Jesus Christ as the human God. This view is expounded by the majority of present-day churches in the global arena; even a large part of Roman Catholicism and evangelicals in the Reformed/Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and charismatic worlds ascribe to the view that Christ’s divinity is permeating his humanity. In alignment with this view on the scale of a permeation of the humanity by the divinity, many evangelical and pietist views operate with the idea of the divine Jesus nestled in the heart of the believer, permeating the egocenter of a human being—created by God—as the driving force of all a person’s good and meaningful thoughts, acts, and doings. The great majority of Christological views found within the Evangelical Christian world embrace this view.
Jesus Christ, as the human God in his life, cross, and resurrection, is also the pre-existent divine Son of God who has permeated the humanity of Jesus to such an extent that he became Jesus Christ. After his resurrection, the human God is the ubiquitous divine agency that continues to permeate people’s faith, the Bible, the church, and the sacraments of bread and wine.
A third approach, which is modern to the hilt, could be termed a human-mono-substantialism. This is mainly a liberal and humanist position that has its roots in the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and was more fully worked out in the Enlightenment period of the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth to the twentieth century, this approach is circumscribed as that of a special and particular human being who, being born in a certain era of history, had a profound impact on history and functioned as one of the many important human prophets who had emerged in history. According to such a liberal and humanistic view, Jesus Christ, as a special and particular human being, is a son of God in the same way as all other human beings are sons and daughters of God.
Although there is a whole array of Catholic positions, the central Catholic transubstantiation, incarnation approach is one in which at conception, the human Jesus is transformed into a divine human being. This is what Catholic views of incarnation through “the virgin birth” entail. In the main Lutheran consubstantiation, incarnation approach, God as the divine agency constantly permeates the human Jesus from his conception onward. This constant permeation of Jesus, the human being by his own divine character, as God’s divine agency circumscribes the Lutheran view of incarnation in all other theological and ecclesial spheres. These views, as well as some forms of one-sided interactional substantialism, are sometimes called anhypostatic views, which mean that the emphasis is more on the divinity than the humanity of Christ. These views are strikingly similar to those in which the divinity is overbearingly attested in the transformed human or permeated human side. A human-mono-substantialist position, with its emphasis exclusively on the human Jesus and a total disregard for his divinity, seems to hold sway in a whole array of theological circles in the world today.
The main approach of this work circulates around the notion of interactional substantialism. In this position, the mystery of simultaneous interactional at-one-ment and at-other-ment of the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ is embodied. The interactional inter-substantialist position has a minority status in the history of Christianity and the Christian churches. Representatives who could easily fit, albeit loosely, into this position are John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and Ellen G. White. Calvin’s and White’s interactional substantialist approaches function as an evaluative tool in chapter three of this book, intersecting and comparing different approaches that emerged in history.