(Comment / reply to a Youtube video)

Heresies have been always exciting. There is a natural pride that I have the truth, belonging to a minority group and being a victim of the ”system”. So often it is not the case. All this fuss against the Trinity is not more than any other sectarian issue, based on popular, simplistic reasoning and selective evidence. Do you really think that the SDA Church will ever turn back to the pioneers’ unripe understanding, moved by some unchurched activists? The SDA Church changed her mind in this regard, in a long periode, about two generations, between 1898-1946. It was not a hasty top-to-bottom change: it was slow and to the extent that the Church appropriated the new understanding. Therefore, the Church will not accept any foreign propaganda in her midst, especially from the pulpit or from the chair. It is unrealistic any idea that the Church should tolerate the free circulation of such theories.

The NTSDA (non-Trinitarian SDA) people hold that Jesus is the Son of God by birth sometime in the eternity past, before the Creation, as a God-begotten God. But where does the Bible say this? There is no one scripture to affirm Christ’s eternal BIRTH as a God. Only pagan gods can be born and be killed. The true divine nature has no beginning and no end. All that are born and can die are creatures. The Creator has no birthday. NTSDA people teach that Jesus would has been born of the Father‘s ”substance”, as a derived God, in the proper (physical) sense. But where does the Bible teach that „the birth from God,” or the quality of „son of God,” should be taken literally, neamely physically?

The title ”Son of God” occurs 85 times in NT (especially in John x34 and Matthew x13). None of these occurences refer to His derived divinity, but to His Messiahship. Son of God is usually synonymous to the incarnated Christ. Gabriel told Mary that this was to be His role and title (”He will me called / named the Son of God / of Most High”), because He didn’t have a human father, cf. Luke 1:32-35. The deity of Christ comes not from the title ”Son of God”, but from the Bible truth that Messiah must be not only man, but also God (Isaiah 9:6).

The root of this truth is found in OT, where the Son of David, the ideal King of the Jews, is called Son of God (1Cr 17:11-14; Ps 80:15). In Psalm 2:2, 6-7, when God enthrones the King of Zion, this moment is called his ”birth”, and He says ”You are My Son, TODAY I have begotten You !” Thus, Messiah’s Sonship is in this case a poetic reference to His enthronement. The Apostles have seen this scripture as an evidence of Christ’s authority received after His resurrection (Acts 13:33; Hebrews 1:5; 5:5).

When John uses the expression ”begotten of the Father”, he does not connect it with the beginning of the world, in John 1:1, but it is connected only with His becoming “flesh” (Jn 1:14, 18). Anyway, the metaphor of God begetting is used also for the true Christians (Jn 1:12-13; 1 Pt 1:3; 1Jn 3:9; 4:7; 5:1-4, 18; Heb 2:11). And Jesus is Son of God also in the general sense as all people are the sons of God (Lk 3:23, 38).

As a God, Christ is not subjected to God because of some natural binding subordination, as a literal Son. He is voluntarily subjected to God, and voluntarily incarnated. In His human state / nature, God gave Him underived, original life, to have in Himself (John 5:26). It is not about a God making another God by giving him eternal existence. Eternity has no beginning and no end. And the true Christ really has no beginning (Hebrews 7:3), as well as the Spirit is eternal (Hebrews 9:14). There is no virtue in claiming a literal Sonship for Christ. Caiaphas knew that Messiah must be ”the Son of God” (Mt 26:63), the unclean spirits knew it alike (Mark 3:11).

If Christ Sonship were about His divine nature, this fact should have been made clear first by Moses and the Prophets, when they have written about the pre-incarnated Christ. The called it ”the Angel (Messenger) of YAHWEH”, ”God” and ”YAHWEH” (Exodus 3), the Captain of the Yahweh’s army, the Messenger of the Covenant, and many other names, but NOT ONCE ”the Son of God”, and nothing about God giving birth to another God. It smells paganly. Now if God could give birth to or create other gods, He would have done it for the whole universe, and He would have surrounded Himself by billions of billions of children who must have been everlasting and good by themselves. The sin would have never entered in such universe, and no controversy on Godhead or Trinitarian, Unitarian, Binitarian teachings would have occurred.

God bless, study your Bible and don’t be indifferent to how God leads His Church! So many realities in the world can differ from our sincere opinion; how much more the spiritual things of God!