IS JESUS CHRIST THE NATURAL AND ADOPTED SON OF GOD?
Editor’s Note: This post contains two essays, the first by Dr. Robert Letham and the second by Dr. Lane G. Tipton. Because these essays interact with David B. Garner’s view concerning the Son’s adoption as set forth in his book Sons in the Son, Ref21 has invited Dr. Garner to respond in these pages if he so desires. Robert Letham’s essay appears first, while Lane Tipton’s essay appears after the footnotes of Letham’s essay.
Here begins Dr. Letham’s essay:
For this article I am thankful to Sherman Isbell and Ryan McGraw for invaluable comments.
Readers are advised to pay attention to the footnotes.
Over the past few years, there has been some discussion of David Garner’s proposal that Christ was adopted as Son in the resurrection.[1] A digest of the argument Dr. Garner presents in his book Sons in the Son[2] is found on the Westminster Seminary website, under the title ‘Ten Themes to Understand Adoption in Christ.’ The following are the most salient points of the proposal, taken directly from the website statement.[3]
2. Adoption is not a feature of the gospel enjoyed by believers but somehow unattained by Christ Jesus himself. Adoption is a gift given to those united to Christ because of the filial status and glory attained by Christ himself. Adoption belongs to the redeemed because the redeemer attained it truly and historically, vicariously and efficaciously. Adoption is a matter of fact, not fiction.
3. Adoption does not serve to distinguish the redeemed from the Redeemer, but serves rather to align the believing sons with the covenantally faithful, chosen, and exalted Son. …
4. … The vortex of saving grace is the death/resurrection of Christ. Christ’s own resurrection marks the moment of his adoption. …
7. Adoption is pretemporal (Eph.1). The divine intention for adoption resides in the pactum salutis. Adoption commences in eternity past; it attains in history because it was purposed before the foundation of the world. Adoption resides in the center of the divine counsel and divine purpose.
8. Adoption is existential, applicational (Rom. 8). … Pauline theology operates with a vital bidirectional concept of adoption: the sons in the Son and the Son for the sons. The adoption/resurrection of the sons gives meaning to the adoption/resurrection of the Son, who is the first fruits and firstborn from the dead. Adoption of the Son par excellence grounds and qualifies the fact and character of the sons’ adoption. Similarly, the meaning of Christ’s adoption finds illumination by the manner in which the apostle Paul speaks of the adoption of the redeemed sons.
9. … Gospel grace is adoptive grace because God is Father, and Jesus is the adopted Son, who pours out himself by his Spirit of adoption.
Since the Christian church, in its official declarations and the writings of its major theologians, has consistently denied that Christ was adopted, this proposal marks a radical shift in Christology. This invites close attention and careful scrutiny.
The first objection to these statements, as they are more fully expressed in Sons in the Son, is exegetical.The postulation that Christ was adopted in his resurrection has no exegetical support in Scripture, not even from Romans 1:3-4, which is integral to the case. No lexicon gives ‘adopt’ as a meaning for ὁριζω, the verb Paul uses. If Paul had meant ‘adopted’ in that passage there were other verbs to use. This lack of support in Holy Scripture is reflected in an entire absence of this proposal from the two millennia of ecclesiastical confession concerning the Son.[4]
In conflict with the Christological confession of the Christian church
Beyond question, it has no backing from the history of orthodox Christology. Dr. Garner says as much in his assertions against Donald MacLeod.[5] The conclusions of the ecumenical councils of the early church affirmed that Jesus of Nazareth was numerically identical to the eternal Son, one of the Trinity. In the incarnation the Son took into personal union a human nature as his own. That human nature has no independent existence of its own. It is the human nature of the eternal Son of the Father, one of the holy Trinity.
Therefore, as Constantinople II affirmed in 553 AD, when it canonized Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius, all actions recorded in the Gospels are those of the person of the eternal Son, one of the Trinity, in accordance with his natures.[6] This means that on the cross the Son offered himself through the eternal Spirit to the Father (Heb. 9:14). All three persons of the Trinity were inseparably involved, as in all God’s works. These councils received the imprimatur of both Greek and Latin churches, were accepted by the Protestants, and have been confessed down the centuries ever since. They preserve a distinction between ‘who’, the person who suffered (one of the Trinity), and ‘what’, the nature in which he suffered (his human nature).[7] As Weinandy states, “Jesus is one ontological entity, and the one ontological entity that Jesus is is the one person of the Son of God existing as a complete and authentic man.”[8]
As is well known, the resolution of the Christological controversies from Ephesus (431) to Constantinople II and III (680-681) was due to the work of Cyril of Alexandria (376-444) and its painstakingly achieved outworking over the course of two hundred years or more. Dr. Garner cites Cyril in support of his case that Christ’s sonship and ours are the same, which is foundational to his argument.[9] However, he cherry-picks extracts and misses the thrust of Cyril’s Christology. Fairbairn points out that Cyril drew a sharp contrast between Christ’s sonship and ours.
Cyril often repeats that our divine sonship does not obscure the Creator-creature distinction, and the primary way he does this is by insisting on the difference between Christ’s sonship and that of believers. We receive sonship by adoption and grace from the outside, but Christ is son by nature and in truth.
Again, in the same place
he draws a very sharp line between Christ, the true Son, and Christians, who are sons by adoption, by being formed to his likeness through grace. Furthermore, Cyril argues that our adopted sonship depends on Christ’s natural sonship. He must be genuinely begotten from the Father, since otherwise he could not adopt us into God’s family.[10]
Fairbairn references many interpreters who have noticed this and then cites Cyril himself:
The concept of sonship means this when applied to one who is so naturally, but the matter is otherwise with those who are sons by adoption (κατὰ θέσιν). For since Christ is not a son in this manner, he is therefore (ἀληθῶς) truly a son, so that on account of this he might be distinguished from us, who are sons by adoption. For there would be sonship neither by adoption nor likeness to God if he did not remain the true Son, to whose sonship our likeness is called and formed by a certain skill and grace.[11]
This is present too in Cyril’s commentary on John, from before the Nestorian controversy, where he states on John 1:12, “the Son will remain unchangeably in the condition in which he is, but we, adopted into sonship and gods by grace, shall not be ignorant of what we are.” In the same place he adds
And again He is clearly seen to be Very Son, proved by comparison with ourselves. For since that which is by nature has another mode of being from that which is by adoption, and that which is in truth from that which is by imitation, and we are called sons of God by adoption and imitation: hence He is Son by nature and in truth, to whom we made sons too are compared, gaining the good by grace instead of by natural endowments.[12]
Cyril’s Christology simply does not allow Dr. Garner’s claim. McGuckin points out the dangers of selecting isolated statements from Cyril.[13] Burghardt remarks that “Cyril’s conception of [our] adoptive sonship … is too complex to be comprehended from isolated quotations; it is a rounded theory built solidly on the incarnation.”[14] Cyril argues throughout that in the incarnation, from the very start, the Son granted to his assumed humanity all he has as God, including his natural Sonship. He refers once or twice in his Hebrews fragment to this communication to his humanity as ‘adoption’ but it is an adoption of his own humanity into the Son’s natural Sonship. By virtue of the hypostatic union, this took place in his person. This is equivalent to what other theologians call the assumption of humanity into union in his divine person. Even in his humanity Christ is the natural Son of God, and that is the ground upon which we are adopted, adopted into the natural Son to share his identical relation to the Father.[15] According to Cyril, in this assumption of human nature by the Son “the incarnation established between the enfleshed Word and human beings a twin relationship” of exchange, he taking our nature that we may become sons, and, secondly, of solidarity of human nature in Christ.[16] In this sense, our adoption is rooted in the incarnation and realized in the ascension of Christ, “through participation in the true Son … to the dignity that belongs by nature to him.”[17] Thus, “the profound difference between our sonship and the Word’s is reducible to this: our filiation is participated, his is natural. In Christ divinity is present substantially; our participation in divinity is an accidental thing … It is imitation because it resembles the natural filiation of the Word … its exemplary cause is invariably the relation of the natural Son of God to his Father.”[18] It is the natural, eternal Son who gives his own Spirit to humanity “and it is only as such that Cyril calls him the Spirit of adoption.”[19] For Cyril “Christ did not ascend to exhibit himself to the Father; for he was and is and always will be in the Father.”[20] No adoptive Son could give God the Spirit to us. Nor can an adoptive Son adopt.
Thus, Christ according to the flesh is God over all (Rom. 9:5). In his mature work Quod Unus sit Christus, referring to Christ’s resurrection, Cyril wrote, “it was the Only Begotten Word of God who has destroyed the dominion of death; not a different son to him joined in a relationship to mediate this economy, but he himself, personally (αὐτὸς δὲ μᾶλλον δι’ ἑαυτοῦ).”[21] And, later, “the Word remained what he was even when he became flesh (μεμένηκε γὰρ ὅπερ ἠν ὁ Λόγος, εἰ καὶ γέγονε σὰρξ), so that he who is over all, and yet came among all through his humanity, should keep in himself his transcendence of all and remain above all the limitations of creation.”[22] In short, Christ is and always was the natural Son. He was never on probation, working to attain an adoptive relationship, in his life or on the cross. This became the considered teaching of the Christian church.
Earlier, Athanasius (295-373) established the language and substance of future discussion in making a clear and consistent lexicographical distinction between the Son as ‘proper’ (ἴδιος) to the Father’s being’ and the adopted sons as ‘participants’ (μέτοχοι). He uses ἴδιος “with startling frequency”[23] through Contra Arianos concerning the Son’s relation to the Father.[24] He is “proper to the Father’s being.”[25] Widdicombe comments, that Athanasius “often uses ἴδιος in conjunction with the idea of sonship by nature and in contrast with the idea of adoptive sonship”[26] since he regarded this as a major point of controversy with the Arians. By this he signifies “the unique status of the sonship of the Son.”[27] He is proper (ἴδιος) to the Father’s being, whereas we are participants (μέτοχοι) in the Son and thereby in the Father in deification, “for by partaking of him we partake of the Father, because the Word is the Father’s own.”[28]
The description of the Logos as the only-begotten, the one and only Son, had a pivotal function in the development of trinitarian and Christological thought in the early centuries.
Oden, whose mission was to present the concerted teaching of the past, comments that “it indicates that Jesus is the only one of his class. The daughterhood and sonship in which believers participate is not natural, independent, or autonomous” for “it distinguished all ‘holy men who are called sons of God by grace’ from that one and only Son, consubstantial with the Father, in whose Sonship our sonship is hidden.” In short, “his eternal sonship is by nature, while the believer’s … sonship in him is by grace.”[29]
Aquinas joined his voice to the classic consensus. Inter alia, in his commentary on John 1:14, he wrote that the Son is only-begotten of God, since he alone is naturally begotten of the Father. But if we consider the Son, insofar as sonship is conferred on others through a likeness to him, then there are many sons of God by participation. ”So, Christ is called the Only Begotten of God by nature; but he is called the First-born insofar as from his natural sonship, by means of a certain likeness and participation, a sonship is granted to many.”[30] In other words, our sonship is derived not from the Son’s having attained any adoptive relation to the Father, but rather from his natural relation as Son to the Father.
Moreover, Calvin sums thus up succinctly in The Catechism of the Church of Geneva:
M: Why do you apply the term only to the Son of God, when God deems us also worthy of the title?
C: That we are sons of God is something that we have not by nature but only by adoption and grace, because God gives us this status. But the Lord Jesus, who is begotten of one substance with the Father, is of one essence with the Father, and with the best of rights is called the only Son of God (Eph. 1:5, John 1:14, Heb. 1:2) since he alone is by nature his Son (At Dominus Jesus, qui ex substantia patris est genitus, uniusque cum patre essentiae est, optimo iure filius Dei unicus vocatur: quum solus sit natura).
M: Do you mean, then, that this honour is properly his as due to him by right of nature (naturae iure), whereas it is communicated to us by gratuitous favour (gratuito beneficio), in that we are his members?
C: Precisely (Omnino).[31]
This argument that Christ was adopted in his resurrection is a departure from the classic Christology of the historic church. However, these objections – weighty though they are – are merely preliminary in comparison to the problems this proposal creates regarding intra-trinitarian relations.
Insuperable problems in the doctrine of God and Christology
This thesis clashes with the classical doctrine of God and the Trinity. These problems stem from the fact that the names of the trinitarian hypostases are relational. The Father is Father in relation to the Son, the Son is Son in relation to the Father. As God they are identical in essence. Sonship, his relation to the Father, is integral to the Son’s eternal hypostatic identity. Augustine discusses this in detail in the early parts of De Trinitate. As for Aquinas, Emery mentions that “it is through his relation to the Son, with whom he breathes the Holy Spirit, that the Father exists as a distinct person.”[32] Moreover, they are indivisible and inseparable in the one essence of God.
Referring to Matthew 11:25-27 and Luke 10:22, T.F. Torrance writes, “In that teaching of the Lord Jesus mediated through the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, the early church learned that the mutual relation between the Father and the Son belongs to the innermost core of the gospel, and they discerned in it the basic principle upon which the Christian apprehension of God rests.”[33] Torrance is emphatic: “Of crucial importance here, as the Nicene theologians saw so clearly, is the ontological bond between Christ and God, … between the incarnate Son and the Father.”[34] “It cannot be stated firmly enough that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God stands or falls with belief in the deity of Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son.”[35] “There is no Father without the Son, and there is no Son without the Father – Fatherhood and Sonship are equally ultimate in the eternal being of the Godhead.”[36]
Furthermore, we cannot read back features of human sonship into God. Torrance adds, “Nor, of course, can we read gender back into God, for gender belongs to creatures only.” Our knowing of God is grounded in his knowing of us. “When we speak of God as Father, therefore, we are not using the term ‘Father’ in a transferred, improper, or inadequate sense; we are using it in its completely proper sense, which is determined by the intrinsic Fatherhood of God himself. God alone is truly and ultimately Father – all other fatherhood is a reflection of this.”[37]
By extension, the same applies to the Son. This is his name, this is who he is eternally without reference to creation. He is forever the Son even if he, together with the Father and the Spirit, had never decided to create. Moreover, this is who Jesus is in his personal identity as man. The whole of the Gospel of John makes this very clear – it is John’s central purpose (John 20:31).
Thus, when something is said about the person of the Son it has entailments relating to the Father. For example, drawn from another context, when Arius claimed that the Son was created by God at some punctiliar point, it was perceived by the church as not only an attack on the Son but also on the Father. The Arian argument entailed that at the punctiliar point at which the Son was created, God became Father to the Son. Since, according to their claim, the Son is not eternal, God was a unitary monad and so he is not inherently Father.[38] Statements about the Son necessarily contain entailments about the Father.
Therefore, for the heretic Eunomius, who followed in Arius’s wake, God had accidents, properties not belonging to the divine essence. The existence of the Son and, additionally, God being Father was not intrinsic to who God is. It was adventitious, an act of the unitary God’s will. It might not have been the case and, without it, God would have remained a unitary monad. Consequently, there was change in God. He became what he previously was not. As Augustine argued, God does not and cannot have accidents.[39]
Returning to the website proposal, Dr. Garner argues that the Son attained adopted sonship, Son par excellence, at his resurrection. Since adoption is a gift, given by natural members of a family, the idea of attaining adoption does not make sense. Nor can an adopted son adopt others into that family.
That aside, it follows that prior to the resurrection this adoptive sonship was not yet possessed by Jesus. Consequently, one of two possibilites follow. The first possibility is that this new sonship is to be posited of his human nature. That would require that the human nature of Christ was an active agent, a person, since it is persons that are adopted, and therefore the proposal would be clearly Nestorian. The alternative would be an accretion to the Son’s divine person. This latter alternative follows from the above fact that it is persons who are adopted, not natures, offices, statuses, or titles.[40] In this latter case, any assertion that Christ was adopted entails that his divine person, he himself, was taken into a new relation that he did not have before.
As we noted with reference to the Arian controversy, such additions or accretions to the person of the Son unavoidably have corresponding effects on the Father, due to the trinitarian persons being relations within the one indivisible divine essence. An accretion to the Son changes the relation the Father has to him; he now sustains a new relation to the Son from what he previously sustained. Such a move entails internal change within the Trinity.
Furthermore, it introduces accidents into God, factors that are not inherent to the divine nature but are contingent. They might not have been. Since the Son becomes what he was not before (Son of God par excellence), the Father assumes a relation to the Son that was not the same as before. Such asserts change in God.
Moreover, the Son – and, by entailment, the Father – becomes dependent on his relation to the creation, in this case on his successful attainment in history of the new sonship par excellence.
In contrast, as Aquinas indicated, statements in Scripture to the effect that God becomes creator, saviour, or the like are applicable only in a temporal context. They do not impinge on his person or the eternal relations of the trinitarian persons. God remains unchanged ad intra in his dealings with the entities he has brought into existence. In the incarnation itself, the divine person of the Son takes into union a human nature, conceived in the womb of Mary, while remaining unchanged in himself. All his incarnate actions are actions of the one divine person, according to his natures.[41] However, the putative attribution of adoption to the Son, in whatever sense it is intended, would actually concern the eternal relations of the inseparable trinitarian persons.[42]
The alternative, it seems, would be to say that the adoption of the Son had no bearing on his relation with the Father but merely affected his human nature, in fulfilment of the office he had undertaken. However, this falls foul of Aquinas’s argument in his Summa theologica:
1 Sonship belongs properly to the person, not to the nature.
2 In Christ there is no other than the uncreated person, to whom it belongs by nature to be Son.
3 Adoption is a participated likeness of natural sonship. Nor can a thing be said to participate in what it has essentially.[43]
4 Therefore Christ, who is the natural Son of God, can in no way be called an adopted Son.
5 No reason prevents calling Christ the adopted Son of God for those who suppose there to be two persons or two hypostases or supposita.[44]
In short, Christ’s human nature could not be adopted, since persons are adopted, not natures.[45] To make any sense, such a proposal would make Christ’s human nature an active agent, a second person. This is a form of the Nestorian heresy; it requires two persons. It is not incarnation but conjunction. Such a Christ could not save us.
Alternatively, it might be proposed that in the incarnation the Son became a divine-human person. However, this too would introduce change into God. Eternally one of the Trinity, a divine person, the Son would then become inherently something other than he eternally is.
If that were so, God would not be true to himself. If he were not true to who he eternally is, how could we be sure that he would remain true to us? In such a case it would not be possible coherently to sing the words of this familiar hymn:
Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with thee;
Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not,
As thou hast been, thou for ever shall be.[46]
The website statement claims that the Son’s adoptive sonship was purposed in the eternal divine counsel, the covenant of redemption. On this basis, it is therefore dependent on God’s will, not his nature. It might not have been if God had chosen not to plan it that way. It was therefore an accident not an essential relation, impossible for the Trinity. Even more striking, since the Son was to be adopted, and it is persons who are adopted, it makes the identity of the Son contingent on events in creation.
John Owen, in refuting a similar argument of Simon Episcopius (1583-1643) and Hugo Grotius (d. 1645) which also posited dual sonships for Christ, wrote
“if Christ be the Son of God partly upon the account of his eternal generation, and so he is God’s proper and natural Son, and partly upon the other accounts mentioned, then—
(1). He is partly God’s natural Son, and partly his adopted Son; partly his eternal Son, partly a temporary Son; partly a begotten Son, partly a made Son—of which distinctions, in reference to Christ, there is not one iota in the whole book of God.
(2). He is made the Son of God by that which only manifests him to be the Son of God, as the things mentioned do.
(3). Christ is equivocally only, and not univocally, called the Son of God; for that which has various and diverse causes of its being so is so equivocally. If the filiation of Christ has such equivocal causes as eternal generation, actual incarnation, and exaltation, he has an equivocal filiation; which whether it be consistent with the Scripture, which calls him the proper Son of God, needs no great pains to determine.
2. The Scripture never conjoins these causes of Christ’s filiation as causes in and of the same kind, but expressly makes the one the sole constituting, and the rest causes manifesting only, as has been declared. And, to shut up this discourse, if Christ be the Son of man only because he was conceived of the substance of his mother, he is the Son of God only upon the account of his being begotten of the substance of his Father.”[47]
This proposal has opened the doors to errors long repudiated by the church – whether Rome, Orthodoxy, or Protestantism – over the past two millennia.[48] In short, it creates a cocktail of acute problems relating to the immutability of God, the Trinity, and Christology, parting ways with the church’s historic confession on Christ’s unchanging personal relation to the Father.[49]
Robert Letham (PhD, University of Aberdeen) has 25 years pastoral experience, was Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Union School of Theology in the UK and still supervises PhD students. His latest book, The Eternal Son, features extensive discussion of Cyril and the post-Chalcedonian Christological controversies. He has no presence on social media and rarely reads internet blogs.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author. However, they are self-consciously based on the decisions of the ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian church in their expressed recognition that they were confessing the apostolic faith, grounded in holy Scripture.
[1] Joshua Maurer and Ty Keiser, ‘Jesus ‘Adopted Son of God’?: Romans 1:4, Orthodox Christology, and Concerns about a Contemporary Conclusion,’ Themelios 46/2 (2021): 319-35; Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., and David B. Dr. Garner, ‘The Divine and Adopted Son of God: A Response to Joshua Maurer and Ty Keiser,’ Themelios 47 /1 (April 2022): 144-55; Robert Letham, The Eternal Son (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2025), 327-43.
[2] David B. Garner, Sons in the Son: The Riches and Reach of Adoption in Christ (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2016), 174-218.
[3] https://wm.wts.edu/read/10-themes-to-understand-adoption-in-christ Accessed 24 March 2026. Originally posted to the site October 2016. As public information, there is a prima facie case that it has the backing of the Seminary. Italics are mine.
[4] The only exceptions to the historical consensus have been sects judged as heretical. Additionally, note Felix of Urgel (d. 818), who held that Christ is both the natural Son, begotten of the Father in eternity and also adopted son and was condemned for these ideas, not deposed but placed under close supervision of his bishop; see ‘Adoptionism of Elipandus and Felix in the Eighth Century’ in Catholic Encyclopaedia https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01150a.htm Accessed 22 May 2026; Richard A. Muller, ‘unio per adoptionem,’in Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), On Simon Episcopius, the noted Arminian, often identified with Socinianism, see the citation from John Owen below.
[5] Garner, Sons in the Son, 183-90.
[6] Richard Price, trans. The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553 with Related Texts on the Three Chapters Controversy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021), 1:61-75, 2:38-48, esp. 46-48. The latter section consists of Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius, Ep. 17. For Cyril’s Explanation of the Twelve Chapters, see Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2000), 175-189. The twelve chapters are the anathemas directed against Nestorius. This work was addressed to the bishops who were to attend the Council of Ephesus in 431 and was intended to convince them, being irenic in tone.
[7] Letham, Eternal Son, 105-98.
[8] Thomas G. Weinandy, ‘Cyril and the Mystery of the Incarnation,’ in The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 30.
[9] Gaffin and Garner, The Divine and Adopted Son of God,’ (2021).
[10] Donald Fairbairn, Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 79. This and the substance of the following two references can be found in Letham, Eternal Son, 337-39.
[11] The translation is in Fairbairn, Grace and Christology, 79, from Cyril, Thesaurus, 32; PG 75:525b.
[12] Cyril of Alexandria, The Commentary on St. John: Vol. 1 (Library of the Fathers of the Church; Philip Pusey; Oxford: James Parker, 1874), 1:9, 104–5; PG 73:154b.
[13] John A. McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 175-76. He points to the church’s search at the time for terminological clarity, its “semantic disorganization” and Cyril’s own flexibility.
[14] Walter J. Burghardt, The Image of God in Man According to St. Cyril of Alexandria (1957; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 107.
[15] I am grateful to Donald Fairbairn for this observation. See also Fairbairn, Grace and Christology, 100.
[16] Burghardt, Image of God in Man, 107.
[17] Cyril, On St. John, 1:9. PG 73:154c.
[18] Burghardt, Image of God in Man, 119.
[19] Burghardt, Image of God in Man, 119.
[20] Burghardt, Image of God in Man, 110.
[21] St. Cyril of Alexandria: On the Unity of Christ, trans. John Anthony McGuckin (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 120; PG 75:1345a-b.
[22] Cyril, On the Unity of Christ, 129; PG 75:1356c.
[23] Peter Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 193.
[24] Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians, 1:15, 16, 58, 2:22, 23, 31; NPNF 2, 4:315-16, 340, 360-61, 364.
[25] Widdicombe, Fatherhood, 196.
[26] Widdicombe, Fatherhood, 197.
[27] Widdicombe, Fatherhood, 197.
[28] Athanasius, Of Synods, 51; NPNF 2, 4:477 See here Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 176–82.
[29] Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life: Systematic Theology: Volume Two (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 58. Italics original.
[30] St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Gospel of St. John: Part 1, James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher (Albany: Magi Books, 1980), [187], 92.
[31] Joannis Calvini Opera Selecta, ed. Petrus Barth et Dora Scheuner (Munich, 1926), 2:81; J.K.S. Reid, ed. Calvin: Theological Treatises (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 96.
[32] Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 164.
[33] Thomas F. Torrance, “The Christian Apprehension of God the Father,” in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism (Alvin F. Kimel Jr; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 132.
[34] Torrance, “God the Father,” 120.
[35] Torrance, “God the Father,” 135.
[36] Torrance, “God the Father,” 136.
[37] Torrance, “God the Father,” 137.
[38] Thus, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, “what exposes still further the untenableness of this view is, that, besides positing a beginning in time of the Son’s existence, it does not, when followed out, spare the Father even, but proves that he also had his beginning in time. For any recognizing mark that is presupposed for the generation of the Son must certainly define as well the Father’s beginning.” Contra Eunomius, 1:25; PG 45:357c; NPNF 2, 5:67.
[39] Augustine, De Trinitate, 5:3-17.
[40] Natures do not act; persons act through natures. If one wants to adopt Sarah, Sarah is adopted, not her human nature. Sarah acts; she acts by means of her human nature.
[41] See Cyril of Alexandria, ‘Anathema 4,’ Third Letter to Nestorius, canonized at Constantinople II.
[42] See the discussion in Aquinas, ST 1a.13.7. The important works of Paul D. Molnar – Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity (2002) and Faith, Freedom, and the Spirit (2017) are also relevant.
[43] Any more than one would decide to adopt one’s own son!
[44] Aquinas, ST 3.23.4, sed contra. See also Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistola 1 ad Cledonium, PG 37:180, Εἰ τις ἐξ ἔργων τετελειωμένον … ἢ μετὰ τὴν ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀνάστασιν υἷοθεσίος ἠξιῶσθαι λέγοι … ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. “If anyone should say that he was perfected by works … or that after the resurrection from the dead counted worthy of adoption … let him be anathema.”
[45] Nor can titles be adopted. When the risen Son was given plenipotential authority (Matt. 28:19) as Messiah and mediator it was an installation to office and function.
[46] I hope and believe that those who ‘adopt’ this thesis can sing and do sing this when it occurs. My point is that this proposal is incoherent with, and contradictory of, what Christians have always believed and confessed.
[47] John Owen, ‘Vindiciae Evangelicae,’ in William H. Goold, ed. Works of John Owen (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1999), 12: 5-590, here 181-195, this quotation 195. For all the differences between Episcopius and the current proposal, the thrust of Owen’s comments remain – a dual sonship is not possible.
[48] Letham, Eternal Son, 105-98.
[49] The proposal is better restated as investiture in office rather than adoption as son. The former refers to function and work, the latter to person. It is the dual personhood that is the problem, with its devastating consequences.
Here begins Dr. Tipton’s essay:
The Impossibility of the Adoption of the Incarnate Mediator
Introduction
The doctrine of adoption in union with Christ stands at the heart of the gospel’s account of filial communion with God. Its proper formulation requires not only careful definition of the believer’s adoptive sonship, but also a thorough account of how that redemptive benefit of sonship relates to the person and work of the incarnate Mediator himself. In Sons in the Son, David B. Garner proposes a “retooled” account that locates adoption within Christ’s own resurrection-history, presenting it as a benefit he first attains and then communicates to those united to him. Before any evaluation can proceed, the terms of this claim must be stated with clarity and set in relation to the received understanding of adoption as a grace given to believers “in and for the only Son” (WLC 74). The following analysis, therefore, will clarify the structure and implications of this proposal before turning to a critical analysis and orthodox alternative.
Garner’s unique thesis is that Christ attains redemptive adoption in his resurrection, and it is only because of that attainment that believers receive redemptive adoption in union with Christ. Examples of how Garner has expressed the core elements of his novel claims include his following statements:
Adoption is not a feature of the gospel enjoyed by believers but somehow unattained by Christ Jesus himself. Adoption is a gift given to those united to Christ because of the filial status and glory attained by Christ himself. Adoption belongs to the redeemed because the redeemer attained it truly and historically, vicariously and efficaciously. Adoption is a matter of fact, not fiction. 3. Adoption does not serve to distinguish the redeemed from the Redeemer, but serves rather to align the believing sons with the covenantally faithful, chosen, and exalted Son. . . The vortex of saving grace is the death/resurrection of Christ. Christ’s own resurrection marks the moment of his adoption.”[1]
Elsewhere he argues,
Adoption, properly understood, is not a gift of Christ to believers yet unattained by him. Just as it proffers no legal or renovative fiction, the gospel proffers no filial fiction. To avoid the accusation, adoption must not lie buried obscurely and artificially beneath some other saving benefit or conflated with another expression of gospel grace. Exegetical and biblico-theological scrupulousness, with an eye to the biblical prominence of union with Christ, will advance the veracity of adoption: the redeemed are sons and daughters of God precisely because Jesus Christ the Son incarnate became the resurrected-adopted Son. A properly retooled systematic articulation of adoption will understand redemptive adoption as historically and explicitly secured in Christ’s own experience.[2]
While Garner does affirm the eternal Sonship and mediatorial office of the incarnate Son of God, he also advances a “properly retooled” claim that in his resurrection the Son of God attained “redemptive adoption” that is then in turn conferred on believers in union with Christ. Before moving on to the critique, we need to gain clarity on this thesis.
Redemptive adoption, what traditional reformed theology more precisely terms soteriological adoption, is a benefit conferred on believers in union with Christ. It is defined as “an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory” (WLC 74). The phrase “in and for his only Son Jesus Christ” not only locates the redemptive adoption of believers in union with Christ but also excludes any notion that Christ, as the only Son, lacks filial status or stands as a co-recipient of adoption alongside believers. “In him” names the bond of union by which believers are incorporated into Christ, and “for him” names the terminus—the glory of the only Son. This language establishes a categorical asymmetry between the person of the incarnate Mediator–who is always the only Son and needs no redemptive adoption–and the persons of believers–who become sons as they receive redemptive adoption.
Yet Garner explicitly denies that adoption is “a gift of Christ to believers yet unattained by him.” That denial has force if and only if the “redemptive adoption” Jesus attains in his resurrection is the very “redemptive adoption” believers receive in union with him. If the “redemptive adoption” predicated of Christ were essentially different from the “redemptive adoption” conferred on believers, his claim collapses. The only coherent reading of his language is that he posits an identitybetween the “redemptive adoption” attained by Jesus in his resurrection and the “redemptive adoption” bestowed on believers in union with Christ.
Advancing his claim further, Garner supplies two positive claims. First, “redemptive adoption” is “historically and explicitly secured in Christ’s own experience.” This locates adoption within Christ’s resurrection-history: the very benefit believers receive is first realized in the resurrection of the incarnate Son. Second, he intensifies the claim by asserting that adoption belongs to the redeemed because the Redeemer “attained it truly and historically, vicariously and efficaciously.” The referent of “it” is the vicarious “redemptive adoption” attained by Christ in his resurrection, which is in turn bestowed on believers in union with the adopted Son.
Therefore, the argument is plain: believers receive “redemptive adoption” because Christ first attained “redemptive adoption.” His attainment of adoption in his resurrection proves vicarious and efficacious precisely because it is the initial realization of the very same adoption conferred on believers in union with Christ.
Building in agreement on the work of Dr. Letham above, and supplementing with the insights of Geerhardus Vos, as representative of Reformed orthodoxy, I will examine Garner’s “retooled” conception of adoption that is first attained by Christ and then applied in Christ. I will argue that Garner’s conception of “redemptive adoption”–his claim that Jesus as raised receives the selfsame benefit[3] of adoption given to believers in union with Christ–is impossible in light of an orthodox understanding of the person and office of the incarnate Mediator.
The condition for adoption—a sinful human person united to Christ—obtains neither in the divine person, nor in the enhypostatic human nature, nor in the office of the incarnate Mediator. The divine person is not a proper subject for adoption, since the eternal Son possesses natural sonship and stands in no need of adoptive sonship. The enhypostatic human nature is not a proper subject for adoption, since adoption belongs to fallen persons, not to sinless human natures. Nor is the incarnate Mediator, considered according to his office and estates, a proper subject for adoption. His mediatorial commission, obedience, humiliation, exaltation, and heavenly session presuppose the natural sonship of the eternal Son rather than supply or confer a filial status he lacks. Consequently, when the incarnate Mediator advances from humiliation to exaltation as “Son in power” (Romans 1:4), that advancement is the public, eschatological declaration and enthronement of the eternal Son in his mediatorial office, not the acquisition of an adoptive filial status or any redemptive benefit proper only to sinful human persons united to him.
Eternal Sonship: The Immutable Hypostasis of the Son[4]
Vos establishes at the outset a governing axiom that controls the entire doctrine of Christ’s person and work: the name “Son,” in its proper and deepest sense, “indicates an eternal-essential constitutive relationship between Father and Son—thus within the Triune Being–that exists entirely apart from the work of the Mediator and does not first flow from it.”[5] “Son” names an immanent personal relation within the triune being of God. Accordingly, sonship is not grounded in decree, mission, or covenantal arrangement, but in what Vos calls “an immutable, immanent law of the Divine Being itself.”[6] The Son is Son by eternal generation–the communication of the person within the one, simple, undivided divine essence. This relation is necessary, not contingent; internal, not external; constitutive, not accidental.
From this it follows that the hypostasis of the Son is immutable. If sonship belongs to the very mode of subsistence of the second person, and if the Son subsists as the entirety of the immutable essence of God, then sonship cannot be acquired, intensified, or altered in any phase of the divine economy. The Son does not become Son—whether at incarnation, baptism, resurrection, or exaltation—but is eternally and immutably Son. Any historical manifestation of sonship presupposes and discloses, rather than produces, this identity. Thus, the incarnate Son who acts in redemption—the one who is sent, who assumes flesh, who obeys, suffers, dies, and is raised—is the very one who eternally subsists as the divine essence as Son. There can be no transition in personal identity and no development in the immutable hypostasis of the Son.
If the personal identity of the eternal Son is exhaustively and immutably constituted in his eternal generation, then such a trinitarian person cannot attain adoption without undergoing change to his hypostasis— which is impossible. Vos’ formulation therefore safeguards a fundamental principle: the economy of redemption reveals the living and immutable hypostasis of the eternal Son, yet it does not progressively constitute the hypostasis of the Son. The Son who appears in earthly history as incarnate is the same Son who is eternal and unchangeable in his personal identity (Mal. 3:6; James 1:17; Heb. 1:10-12; 13:8).
Eternal Appointment as Mediator: Grounded in Sonship
Yet Vos affirms without hesitation that the Son is eternally appointed Mediator in the pactum salutis (Ps. 110:1,4; I Pet. 1:20; Heb. 10:5-7). This appointment presupposes, rather than constitutes, sonship (Ps 2:7-8). The mediatorial office does not generate filial identity but rests upon it as its necessary foundation. Hence Vos’ formulation proves axiomatic: “the reason why Christ has become our Mediator and our covenant Head is in His eternal sonship (Gal 4:6).”[7] The Son is not Son because he is Mediator; rather, he is Mediator because he is Son. Any reversal of this order would collapse the distinction between what is eternal and constitutive of the divine person and what is economic and expressive of that divine person in the work of redemption.
Vos further clarifies the fitting character of relation between eternal sonship and his appointment as Mediator (convenientia). The mediatorial actions—being sent, anointed, subordinated in office as incarnate, glorified, and endowed with an inheritance—are “fitting for the relationship in which the Son by nature stands to the Father.”[8] The mediatorial mission of the Son corresponds to his eternal relation of personal procession. The one who is eternally from the Father as the Son is the one who is sent by the Father as the Mediator; the one who eternally receives his person from the Father is the one who, in the economy, receives authority and inheritance from the Father. Yet this correspondence must be carefully qualified; it is expressive, not constitutive. The mission of the Son does not establish or intensify sonship; rather, it manifests sonship in its official Mediatorial function.
Accordingly, the eternal Son’s filial identity provides the ontological precondition of his mediatorial vocation. Because he is Son by nature, he alone is suited to be sent, to reveal the Father, to obey in incarnate filial submission, and to receive the inheritance on behalf of his people. The eternal appointment and historical execution of the Son’s office of Mediator presupposes and reveals his eternal filial identity as God-from-himself and Son-from-the-Father.
Identity of Person: The Incarnate Mediator Is the Eternal Son
This leads to a central and all controlling christological axiom: the person of the incarnate Mediator is numerically identical with the person of the eternal Son. There is no mediatorial subject alongside the Son, no transformation of the Son into a different kind of personal agent, and no composite personal identity arising from the incarnation (such as a divine-human person). The hypostasis who is eternally begotten of the Father is the very same hypostasis who assumes and personalizes his true human nature as he executes his office as the incarnate Mediator. The incarnation, the death, the resurrection, the ascension, and the session of the incarnate Son do not and cannot change his immutable and living hypostasis.
This has profound implications. The obedience rendered under the law, the suffering endured in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, the death undergone, the resurrection effected, and the exaltation received—these are not the acts of a human person subject or a newly constituted divine-human person. They are the acts of the eternal Son himself as incarnate. The unity of subject across all states and stages of the economy is absolute. There is no shift in personal identity or change in the hypostasis in the hypostatic-union or in the Son’s transition from humiliation to exaltation in his personalized humanity.
Because the subject of all mediatorial action is identical with the eternally begotten Son, no phase of the incarnate life can introduce mutation, development, or augmentation into the hypostasis. The Son does not become something he was not, such as a newly emergent divine-human person. There is no constitutional change in his divine person as incarnate, crucified, or resurrected. The incarnation and all that follows from it must be understood as the historical accomplishment of redemption by the immutable person of the incarnate Mediator.
The Impossibility of an Adopted Enhypostatic Human Nature
This leads to another controlling axiom: the human nature of the incarnate Mediator does not exist as an independent center of personal agency, nor does it constitute a secondary subject alongside the divine person. Rather, it subsists in the eternal Son, who alone is the acting subject in all mediatorial operations. Consequently, the humanity of Christ cannot be the bearer of a distinct filial relation—whether natural or adoptive—because that human nature subsists in the filial identity of the divine person who assumes and personalizes it. This is precisely the force of enhypostatic Christology as articulated by Vos: “Christ has assumed human nature into the unity of His person. His human nature is therefore borne in the person of the Son of God.”[9] The point is not merely that the two natures are united, but that personal subsistence belongs exclusively to the hypostasis of the Son. The humanity, therefore, is not a separate subject that acts, believes, obeys, or suffers alongside the Son; it is the nature in and through which the Son himself acts. All mediatorial activity—obedience, suffering, death, resurrection—is the one person acting according to both natures, never the coordination of two personal agents.
From this it follows that sonship is antecedently and immutably the property of the person who assumes the humanity as the incarnate Mediator.[10] Because the human nature subsists in the Son, it participates in the filial identity of that person without becoming the bearer of a distinct filial status. Any attempt to ascribe to the humanity a proper sonship—either a natural sonship or an adoptive sonship—introduces a second subject and thereby dissolves the unity of the person who assumes and personalizes the human nature. The enhypostatic structure excludes such a move at its root.
Accordingly, the incarnation does not (a) effect a change in the filial status of the Son or (b) supply an assumed human locus of personhood (i.e., an assumed human person). There is no emergence of a divine-human person, just as there is no assumption of a human person. There is no supervening personal identity, and no development from non-filial to filial existence. The Son does not become what he is not; rather, as the eternal Son he assumed and personalized a true human nature while remaining what he eternally is—Son by eternal generation.
It is therefore dogmatically impossible to predicate adoption of the enhypostatic human nature of Jesus, since adoption pertains to fallen human persons brought from personal alienation due to original and actual sin into filial communion with God by grace. A sinless human nature, considered in itself, is not a proper subject of adoption. Adoption is not the elevation of a sinless nature, but the redemptive act by which sinful persons are received into the number of God’s children and given a right to their privileges (WSC 34). To ascribe adoption to Jesus cannot cohere with orthodox christology–divine personhood, enhypostatic humanity, or mediatorial office. Believers are fallen human persons who stand under actual guilt and existential estrangement for original and actual sin and who receive filial standing through union with Christ. Consequently, the categories proper to adoptive sonship apply only to believers united to Christ through effectual calling and faith.
Moreover, the messianic sonship of Jesus distinguishes the Redeemer from the redeemed; it at no point subsumes their identities under a single filial category. Christ is the incarnate Mediator, the anointed Son sent by the Father to accomplish redemption for those who are adopted in him. His filial identity is therefore not derivative or redemptive, but natural and eternal. The mediatorial office rests entirely upon his identity as the eternal Son. Precisely because he is the natural Son, he can communicate adoptive sonship to others through union with himself. The resurrection, therefore, does not transform Christ into an adopted son alongside believers; rather, it publicly declares and enthrones the incarnate Son as the exalted Messiah who secures and bestows adoptive sonship upon his people.
Enhypostatic Christology excludes any attempt to predicate adoptive sonship of Christ or his assumed humanity. The human nature of Jesus does not subsist as an independent personal subject or secondary center of agency capable of acquiring a distinct filial status. It subsists wholly in the eternal Son, who alone is the acting subject in all mediatorial operations. Sonship therefore belongs properly and immutably to the divine person who assumes and personalizes the humanity, not to the humanity considered in abstraction. Adoption, by contrast, pertains exclusively to fallen human persons alienated by original and actual sin and restored to filial communion with God through union with Christ. It is a redemptive benefit granted to believers, not a Christological predicate. Christ is neither a human person elevated into sonship nor a sinless human nature granted filial standing. He is the natural Son incarnate, publicly enthroned in resurrection as the exalted Mediator who bestows adoptive sonship upon his people.
The Absolute Distinction between Eternal Sonship and Adoptive Sonship
This leads to one of Vos’ most penetrating clarifications. On the one hand, for those united to Christ, “there is therefore a bond between His sonship and theirs.”[11] As the covenant head and “firstborn among many brothers”[12] (Rom. 8:29), Christ is the source and ground of their filial life. Their sonship is not parallel or independent–it is participatory—deriving wholly from union with him by the Spirit and through faith. Yet Vos immediately and decisively qualifies this unity: “there always remains the difference that He is Son from eternity through generation, and therefore only Son (Mediator) through foreordination and the preparation of His human nature, while they are children of God exclusively through adoption and re-creation according to the image of Christ.”[13] This is not a difference of degree but of kind. Christ’s sonship is natural, eternal, and constitutive of his hypostatic identity; the natural Son is appointed from eternity as Mediator and incarnated in the fullness of time; the believer’s sonship is conferred exclusively in the gracious act of adoption.
This absolute distinction between the eternal person of the Son and the human person of believers establishes the impossibility of attributing adoption to Christ at every dogmatic level: the Logos asarkos, the Logos incarnandus, and the Logos ensarkos–whoare all the same Logos.
First, the Son as the Logos asarkos: he is eternally Son by generation. Sonship is not conferred but constitutive; not acquired but identical with his personal identity. Adoption, however, presupposes the absence of such natural sonship and introduces a new filial relation by grace. To predicate adoption of the eternal Son would therefore imply that he comes to possess what he did not previously have, thereby introducing mutability into the hypostasis of the Son. But the Logos asarkos does not become what he is; he eternally is what he is—Son.
Second, with respect to the Logos incarnandus, Vos insists that sonship grounds mediatorship, not the reverse: “the reason why Christ has become our Mediator and our covenant Head is in His eternal sonship.”[14] The order is fixed—sonship precedes and conditions the mediatorial office. Adoption would invert this order, making sonship the result of redemptive accomplishment. In doing so, it would transform what is ontologically foundational into something economically derived, thereby collapsing the distinction between person and office and undermining the covenantal logic of redemption.
Third, regarding the Logos ensarkos, the doctrine of enhypostasia renders adoption impossible. The human nature assumed by the Son does not subsist as an independent subject but in the person of the Son. As Vos states, “Christ has assumed human nature into the unity of His person. His human nature is therefore borne in the person of the Son of God.”[15] The humanity cannot be the bearer of a distinct filial relation—whether natural or adoptive—because it has no personal subsistence apart from the Son. If adoption is predicated of the person, the immutability of his eternal sonship is denied; if of the nature, a second subject is introduced. Both options are christologically untenable.
Thus, Vos’ framework yields this conclusion: Christ’s sonship is the ontological ground of the believer’s adoptive sonship, not a parallel instance of it. The bond between each in union is real but asymmetrical—he is Son by nature; they are sons by grace. Any attempt to attribute adoption to Christ collapses this asymmetry, confuses eternal generation with temporal grace, and compromises the unity and immutability of the person of the Son.
“Son of God in Power” in Romans 1:4: Mediatorial Investiture, Not Soteriological Adoption
Read in light of fundamental governing distinctions—the Logos asarkos, the Logos incarnandus, and the Logos ensarkos—Romans 1:4 must be interpreted with strict attention to both personal immutability and the historical advancement of the incarnate Mediator in his office and estate. The phrase “Son of God in power” does not denote the acquisition of a new filial identity, much less the reception of adoptive sonship in the soteriological sense proper to believers. Rather, it designates the resurrection-exaltation of the incarnate Son into the full and public exercise of his mediatorial dominion in glory. What is “effectually appointed” (ὁρισθέντος) is not a transition from non-sonship to sonship, but the decisive installation of the Logos ensarkos into a new mode of royal, pneumatic, and exalted existence according to his enhypostatic humanity.
Vos’ understanding of ὁρίζειν is decisive at precisely this point. The term signifies public determination and declaration, installation and investiture of the glorified Son of God. It is a juridical, royal, and eschatological advancement of estate. The resurrection is thus the climactic advancement of the incarnate Mediator in the historical execution of his office.
Accordingly, Romans 1:4 concerns mediatorial advancement and royal enthronement that culminates in ascension and intercession at the Father’s right hand in heaven (Romans 8:34; Col. 3:1-2; Heb. 8:1-2). The incarnate Son who suffered in weakness is now declared and installed publicly as the exalted Son in power (II Cor. 13:4). The language is functional and eschatological in terms of the historia salutis, not adoptive in the sense of the ordo salutis. It concerns the glorified mode in which the incarnate Mediator now lives, reigns, and exercises dominion by the Spirit following his resurrection from the dead. The transition is therefore covenant-historical and redemptive-historical, not soteriologically adoptive. The same person who humbled himself unto death is now exalted above every name in the advancement of his royal office and heavenly estate (Phil. 2:6-11).
This distinction is essential because believers and Christ do not advance in the same way. Believers move from guilt to justification, from alienation to adoption, and from corruption to sanctification because they are fallen human persons redeemed by grace in union with Christ. Christ, however, is not a sinful human person who acquires filial standing through resurrection. He is the eternal Son incarnate whose resurrection manifests, vindicates, and enthrones him as the exalted Mediator. “Son in power,” therefore, designates the glorified administration of the mediatorial kingdom by the incarnate Son, not the acquisition of adoptive sonship alongside those whom he redeems.
The Exclusion of Adoption and the Preservation of Asymmetry
The controlling principle that follows from these related lines of thought now emerges: the absolute and inviolable asymmetry between the divine person and mediatorial office of the incarnate Son and the fallen human person of the believer. Nothing in the economy of redemption permits this asymmetry to be collapsed or elided. Thus, the category of soteriological adoption cannot, in the nature of the case, be predicated of the incarnate Mediator at any point in his incarnate existence.
Adoption belongs to those who, on account of sin, are not sons by nature. It presupposes guilt, alienation, and the need for a judicial transition into filial standing. It is therefore a benefit proper only to the redeemed by and in union with Christ (ordo salutis). By contrast, the incarnate Mediator is the eternal Son by generation, who is appointed the Mediator from eternity, who assumes in history a human nature into the unity of his person, and who executes his office and advances his estate in history without any mutation of his hypostasis. He does not become Son; he is Son. His mediatorial work presupposes and expresses that identity rather than constitutes it.
The Mediator, as divine person and covenant head, is the ground and source of adoptive sonship; the believer, as a fallen human person, is the recipient of that sonship by grace. The categories do not converge. The one secures and bestows; the other receives. To predicate adoption of the Mediator would therefore introduce into his person or office a category proper only to those who require redemption, thereby collapsing the asymmetry that structures the entire economy of salvation.
Romans 1:4, therefore, speaks not of the soteriological adoption of the Son, but of the beginning of his royal, pneumatic enthronement at the right hand of the Father (Ps. 110; Heb. 8:1-2). The eternal Son, appointed Mediator because he is Son, is publicly installed in power through the resurrection as the one who has completed his mediatorial work. His sonship remains what it eternally is (e.g., natural, immutable, and constitutive of his person) even as that glory is revealed in a new way in the eschatological advancement of his office and estate as the incarnate Mediator. The believer’s sonship, by contrast, is adoptive, derivative, and gracious. He becomes in adoption what he was not–a son of God.
The asymmetry is decisive and cannot be violated: the incarnate Mediator is the natural Son and the ground of adoption; the believer is a fallen human person who becomes a son by grace in union with the incarnate Mediator. To ascribe to Christ the selfsame redemptive benefit of adoption given to believers in union with Christ instantly confuses his person with the persons of believers and collapses the personal distinction between the Redeemer and the redeemed.
Conclusion
In this light, then, I offer two controlling observations that circumscribe the major doctrinal errors in Garner’s thesis and at the same time chart the path of an orthodox doctrine of Christ and of adoption.
First, Garner’s thesis rests on a confusion of divine and human persons and collapses the personal distinction between the Redeemer and the redeemed. Adoption cannot be attributed to a divine person, who is Son by nature, nor to a human nature, which is not a personal subject. Since no human personal subject exists in Christ, the necessary condition for adoption is absent, rendering the thesis impossible at its root.
Second, the movement from humiliation to exaltation in Romans 1:3–4 pertains to the advancement of the office and estates of the incarnate Mediator. It denotes his royal investiture as Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead—a category that in the nature of the case cannot apply to a mere human person but only to a divine person incarnate. The relation between the incarnate Mediator and the believer is therefore one of ordered analogy, such that the advancement of his office and estate constitutes the redemptive ground and archetypal pattern of the benefits communicated to believers in union with him. Yet to construe (as Garner does) Christ’s advancement as adoptive sonship misidentifies the subject of that advancement and transposes a category proper only to the redeemed in the ordo salutis onto the incarnate Mediator himself in the historia salutis.
To put it in one final summary statement, soteriological adoption applies only to human persons. It is a legal act that terminates on a human person who, as a sinner, stands in need of reconciliation and is granted filial standing by grace in union with Christ. But no such human person exists in Christ. If the incarnate Mediator is a divine person who has assumed an enhypostatic human nature as the Mediator, then the condition required for his soteriological
adoption–a sinful human person–does not exist.
Appendix
The “Vindication” of the Incarnate Mediator in 1 Timothy 3:16: The Impossibility of His Receiving the Redemptive Benefit of Justification Granted to Believers
Building directly upon the foregoing dogmatic conclusions, the clause “vindicated by the Spirit” (ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι) in I Timothy 3:16 must be interpreted in a manner that preserves the same absolute asymmetry already established with respect to adoption. Just as it is impossible for the incarnate Mediator to receive the benefit of soteriological adoption granted to believers in union with Christ, so it is equally impossible for him to receive the benefit of soteriological justification granted to believers in union with Christ. If the term “justification” is used with reference to Christ, it must be carefully qualified so as to account for the irreducible distinction between his person and office as representative sin-bearer—while remaining personally impeccable—and the sinful and guilty person of the believer.
In this connection, it is helpful to clarify the structure of justification itself. The ground of justification is the imputed righteousness of Christ; the instrument is faith alone as the Spirit-wrought, receptive means; and the legal effect is the forensic verdict—remission of sins and acceptance as righteous in God’s sight. Justification is not a composite of parts but a single divine judicial act, whereby God imputes Christ’s righteousness and, on that basis, declares the sinner forgiven and righteous. Both remission and acceptance are strictly forensic determinations, terminating on the legal standing of the believer before God.
With that framework in view, the decisive issue in interpreting 1 Timothy 3:16 turns on the identity of the subject. The one who is “vindicated” is the person of the incarnate Mediator, the immutable hypostasis of the eternal Son who has assumed an enhypostatic human nature. By contrast, justification in its proper soteriological sense terminates upon a sinful human person who stands in need of the remission of sins and the imputation of righteousness. It presupposes guilt, condemnation, and alienation. Yet none of these conditions obtain in Christ. As to his person, he is the eternal Son; as to his incarnate identity, he is “holy, innocent, unstained” (Heb. 7:26). Even when he is said to be “made sin” (2 Cor. 5:21), the sin he bears is strictly forensic—imputed, alien, and judicial—not inherent, personal, or constitutive of his being. He never becomes sinful in himself, nor does he require forgiveness or the imputation of an alien righteousness.
Accordingly, what occurs in the resurrection is not justification in the sense of the justification of the ungodly, but the public vindication of the righteous one who had borne judgment vicariously. The term ἐδικαιώθη must therefore be read within the categories of historia salutis, not ordo salutis. It denotes not the conferral of a justificatory benefit upon a deficient subject, but the eschatological declaration that the incarnate Mediator is righteous, that his obedience has satisfied divine justice, and that death has no claim upon him. The Spirit, who anointed and upheld him throughout his humiliation, now bears decisive witness in the resurrection that his work as the incarnate Mediator is complete and accepted. This is not the imputation of righteousness to one who lacks it, but the public manifestation and confirmation of a righteousness that is proper to his incarnate person and inherent to his finished work.
Accordingly, Christ cannot be “justified” in the same sense believers are justified without implying that he moved from personal condemnation to acceptance before God. But no such transition obtains in him. The resurrection therefore does not confer upon Christ the redemptive benefit of justification granted to believers in union with him. Rather, it publicly vindicates the righteous sin-bearing Mediator whose obedience has fully satisfied divine justice. He bears guilt representatively so that believers may be justified redemptively. Federal representation explains how Christ can endure penal judgment without personal sin; it does not make him a recipient of the justificatory benefit proper only to the ungodly. The wrath he endured was therefore not grounded in any corruption or personal liability proper to him, but in the real judicial imputation of the sins of his people to him. God did not treat an innocent private individual as guilty; he judged the sin-bearing Mediator who voluntarily stood in the legal place of his people under the sanctions of the covenant.
The structure of 1 Timothy 3:16 confirms this reading. Each clause marks a successive moment in the historia salutis of the incarnate Mediator: “manifested in the flesh,” “vindicated by the Spirit,” “seen by angels,” “proclaimed among the nations,” “believed on in the world,” “taken up in glory.” These are not stages in the application of redemption to believers, but in the accomplishment and proclamation of redemption by the incarnate Son. The “vindication” clause, in particular, marks the transition from humiliation to exaltation, corresponding to the resurrection as the decisive, juridical turning point in the Mediator’s estate.
There is, therefore, a real forensic analogy between Christ’s vindication and the believer’s justification, but it is strictly ordered and asymmetrical. In the case of believers, justification creates a new legal standing that did not previously exist: the ungodly are declared righteous on the basis of an alien righteousness received by faith. In the case of Christ, vindication does not create a new standing but declares and manifests the righteousness that was always his, even while he stood under the imputation of our guilt. He does not move from personal guilt to righteousness, but from bearing imputed guilt to being publicly declared righteous. The analogy is juridical, but the subjects, conditions, and effects are categorically distinct.
For this reason, to predicate of Christ the benefit of soteriological justification granted to believers would introduce a category that is formally inapplicable to his person and office. If justification is predicated of the person in the same sense as it is of believers, then his intrinsic righteousness is denied; if it is predicated of the humanity as such, then a second personal subject is introduced—one capable of receiving forensic benefits distinct from the Son. Both alternatives are excluded by the doctrine of the hypostatic union. As with adoption, so with justification: the absence of a human personal subject in Christ renders the attribution of that benefit impossible at its root.
This asymmetry is decisive and must be preserved without qualification. The same reasoning that prevents Christ from receiving the selfsame benefit of justification also prevents him from receiving the selfsame benefit of adoption.[16] Both benefits presuppose a sinful human person who stands in need of redemptive grace. Christ is neither unjust nor a non-son. He cannot be justified as we are, because he is not an unjust person needing an alien righteousness received by faith. He can only be vindicated as the righteous Mediator who bore alien guilt. Likewise, he cannot be adopted as we are, because he is the eternal Son by generation, and his enhypostatic humanity does not introduce a second personal subject capable of adoptive sonship.
Thus, the resurrection does not confer upon Christ any soteriological benefit proper to sinners—neither justification nor adoption nor sanctification. Rather, it publicly vindicates the inherent righteous incarnate Mediator who has borne the curse of his people and who has secured for them all of the benefits of redemption. The vindication of the always-righteous sin-bearing substitute constitutes the forensic ground in the historia salutis upon which the justification of believers rests in the ordo salutis. Only because he is vindicated as always and perfectly righteous in the resurrection can the ungodly be justified by faith alone in union with him. If the incarnate Mediator is a divine person who has assumed an enhypostatic human nature, then the condition required for his soteriological justification–a sinful human person–does not exist.
Lane G. Tipton is pastor of Trinity Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Easton, Pennsylvania, and Fellow of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Reformed Forum.
[1]For the full statement of Garner’s Ten Themes to Understand Adoption in Christ, consult (https://wm.wts.edu/read/10-themes-to-understand-adoption-in-christ Accessed 5 February 2026).
[2]David B. Garner, Sons in the Son: The Riches and Reach of Adoption in Christ (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2016), 250.
[3]The term “selfsame” serves as a precise analytic shorthand for the claim that one redemptive benefit—adoption—is first attained by Christ in his resurrection and then applied to believers in union with him. It captures both identity (the benefit is the same in kind and content) and symmetry (it is predicated of Christ and believers in the same sense). Though Garner does not use this language, it clarifies the logic of his claims: adoption is “secured in Christ’s own experience” and “attained” by him, implying that he first possesses what he communicates. The question, then, is whether Christ attains the identical filial status later given to believers. Does he, in fact, attain the soteriological gift of adoption conferred upon believers? The answer, as we shall see, is quite emphatically no.
[4]Vos explicitly and absolutely denies any change of the person of the incarnate Mediator.
“In the Logos, a divine person, who is immutable, is present from eternity. If now there can be but one person in the Mediator, and the divine person cannot be eradicated or changed, then it is self-evident that this one person is the divine person of the Logos. One can only maintain the immutability of God if one holds to the deity of the person in the Mediator. The choice lies between two persons or one divine person” (Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., vol. 3, Christology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012–2016), 42.
“Because already in the Logos there was a divine person who could not change, and so His humanity had to be impersonal or there would have been two subjects in existence” (RD, 3, 47).
“Not an apparent incarnation but only a genuine humanity distinguished from deity can avail here. The Mediator must be God, and still He must have a history. With these givens, the only way one can escape pantheism in Christology is by establishing that Christ, along with His true deity and unmixed with it, also possesses genuine humanity, from which all the mutability mentioned above can be predicated” (RD, 3, 25).
“Thus the person of the Logos with its personality provides His human nature with the steadfastness and immutability by which the covenant of grace is distinguished from the first covenant, the covenant of works. The oneness and the deity of the person are of importance for the affirmation that Christ could not sin” (RD, 3, 48).
[5]Ibid., 15.
[6]Ibid.
[7]Ibid., 16.
[8]Ibid., 15.
[9]Ibid., 16.
[10]Vos observes, “He is called “the Son” not simply because of His being the Messiah, but because His Messiahship is determined by an anterior sonship lying back of it.” Geerhardus Vos, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus: The Modern Debate about the Messianic Consciousness, ed. Johannes G. Vos, Second Edition (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002), 151.
[11]RD, 3, 16.
[12]RD, 3, 16.
[13]RD, 3, 17.
[14]RD, 3, 16.
[15]RD, 3, 16.
[16]This same asymmetry applies with equal force to sanctification. Christ cannot attain or receive the selfsame redemptive benefit of sanctification given to believers, because sanctification, as applied to believers, presupposes a sinful human person who must be renewed after the image of God, delivered from the dominion of inherited original sin, mortified in remaining corruption, and vivified unto new obedience. None of these conditions can be predicated of Christ. The eternal Son assumed a true human nature, but not a fallen person, nor a nature polluted by original sin, and so he is not a proper subject to receive moral renovation. Therefore, Christ may be consecrated, set apart, and perfected for his mediatorial office; but he cannot be sanctified as sinners are sanctified. Just as he is vindicated as inherently righteous rather than justified as an unjust person, and enthroned as the glorified Son rather than adopted as a non-son, so he is consecrated as always holy rather than renovated as one under sin. To say otherwise collapses the distinction between redemption accomplished and redemption applied and confuses the sinless Redeemer with the sinful redeemed.
