SURREJOINDER TO DR. GARNER
Editor’s Note: On June 1, 2026 Dr. Robert Letham published, “Is Jesus Christ the Natural and Adopted Son of God.” His essay interacted with David B. Garner’s view concerning the Son’s adoption as set forth in his book Sons in the Son. Dr. Garner responded on June 17, 2026 with Resurrection and Adoption: A Response to Drs. Letham and Tipton. The article below is Dr. Letham’s surrejoinder.
Preliminary comments
Let me make plain that my article on this site was directed at the argument of Dr. Garner, not at Dr. Garner himself. In the Appendix in my book, The Eternal Son, I was sharply critical but asked that Dr. Garner reconsider his thesis. In the article I took care to focus on “the proposal.” This follows an historical distinction between the work and the person, established at Constantinople II, where the anathematization of the three chapters (works by Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ibbas of Emessa, and Theodoret ofCyrrhus) did not anathematize the persons. The books were considered heretical, the authors were not. Indeed, anathemas did not necessarily involve deposition from office. Felix of Urgel, who held views not too dissimilar to Dr. Garner, was condemned in 818 AD, not deposed, instead placed under the close supervision of his bishop.
In the above-mentioned appendix I agreed that Dr. Garner affirmed wholeheartedly the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. I argued that he is not a classic adoptionist, for they held that Jesus was a mere man who was elevated to divine status at his resurrection.
I cited Quentin Skinner to the effect that Dr. Garner could not himself be accused of Nestorianism on the basis that someone cannot be held to believe or support something that they have no intention of believing or supporting, although I made very clear that the proposal could readily be construed in such terms. Furthermore, I have no authority as an individual to declare someone a heretic; that is a matter for duly constituted ecclesiastical authorities, if it were considered proven. I can merely state that, in my estimation, a particular belief is inconsistent or incompatible with the historic Christian faith. That has been, and is, my contention here.
Since I wrote the appendix in summer 2024, I was alerted at a presbytery meeting on 14 February 2026 to the Statement on the Westminster Seminary website. Having lived in the UK for seventeen years, being British and remote from the American scene, fully engaged in my responsibilities and not in the habit of prying around on the recesses of seminary websites to dredge up incriminating information, I had been unaware of the fact. Contrary to Dr. Garner’s innuendo, the timing of the article was hardly a cunning plan but was providential. Moreover, although his book was published in 2016, the first time my attention was drawn to it was around 2020-2022 when I heard two separate preachers refer positively to its thesis that Christ had been adopted. Due to work and writing commitments and the long process of gaining entry to the USA I was unable to purchase and read it until May 2024. We delayed the release of our articles so as to avoid causing problems at the graduation ceremonies of Westminster Seminary.
I wrote in a footnote that the website statement had at least the tacit approval of the Seminary. Dr. Garner says it does not represent its official position. However, it may not have received its imprimatur but, by virtue of having been on its website for ten years, it must have its non obstat, or else the institution for a long time has exercised no control over its public information.
Moreover, this issue is absolutely not a case of Letham v Garner. Who am I to demand that others follow my ideas? No, the issue is an apparent addition to the faith that, if true, would do great damage. If it is false, it is better that it be shown to be false, and divergent from the considered confession of the church over the centuries on the person of Christ. Given the work I have done down the years on the trinitarian and christological debates, my commitments through my ordination vows and, above all, my loyalty to Christ, what right have I to keep silent? That would be the greatest betrayal.
I have argued that the entailments of the proposal, however it may be construed, lead either to a form of Nestorianism, a denial of divine immutability, or both. This is reinforced by Dr. Garner’s frequent mention in his rejoinder of a new and unprecedented state of Christ’s sonship. To remind readers, Nestorianism was a major heresy in the early church but one that has never entirely died away. In a legitimate concern for the reality of Christ’s humanity, Nestorius failed to articulate the unity of the person of Christ, instead positing dual sons. There was no incarnate union, only a conjunction of two natures. If that were so, we could not be saved. I argued, from Aquinas and others, that a dual sonship as advocated by Dr. Garner, pointed in that direction by positing the human nature of Christ as an active agent.
Moreover, Dr. Garner frequently expressed the idea that Christ’s eternal Sonship underwent development and change. He does so in his rejoinder. Since Christ is the eternal Son of the Father this entails change in God, which consequently threatens his faithfulness.
It is not without interest that in his riposte Dr. Garner brings no reasons to bear to refute my theological arguments, but can only point to others who share his opinion. In a private online meeting with Dr. Garner and a colleague of his, prior to the publication of The Eternal Son, I mentioned that the issue does not concern who may agree with the proposal. Even if it be a famous theologian, a celebrity preacher, John Calvin, the Virgin Mary, or the Angel Gabriel, the prime question is not ‘who?’ but ‘what?’ It would not surprise me in the least if a host of contemporary evangelicals shared these views but for the questions at stake this is irrelevant, other than that they will be countered by the historic confession of the Christian church – Rome, Orthodox, Protestant – for the last two thousand years.[1]
One can only conclude that, by evading these criticisms Dr. Garner cannot answer them. Since the criticisms of the proposal included Nestorianism, a major heresy condemned by the council of Ephesus (431 AD), and undermining of the immutability of God, a foundational axiom of the Bible and Christian history, it appears that Dr. Garner is unfamiliar with the ecumenical councils or else chooses to disregard them. Instead of presenting any such evidence, he reasserts his position. He has tried to divert attention by typical tactics in such cases – ad hominem attacks on Dr. Tipton and deflection in his rejoinder to me, attempting to make my position the problem, when I am merely and self-consciously presenting and expounding the historic confession of the Christian church, no more, no less. Those tactics are clearly self-condemnatory. However, there are even deeper issues at stake than these, as we shall see.
1 The meaning of the personal union: who is Jesus of Nazareth?
Only God can name God. God has revealed that he is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one and indivisible. These are his names. They are not metaphors. They signify who the three are. They are subsistent relations in the one indivisible being of God, distinguished only by relations of origin. The Son is eternally the Son, begotten of the Father, and would be so even if God had never decided to bring other entities into existence. That is who he is, in the unity of the indivisible trinity. The name ‘Son’ is without any relation to the created order. It is who he is, in the unity of the indivisible trinity.
The Son, together with the Father and the Spirit work inseparably in all God’s works and ways. The three are distinct but cannot be divided.
When the Son became incarnate, taking into union a human nature as his own, he underwent no change. He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever (Heb. 13:8). The child Mary bore was God; eternally divine, now as a human baby. She is theotokos, God-bearer, the mother of God. Thus, throughout Jesus of Nazareth’s life all his actions are those of one of the Trinity, according to his natures. He, the eternal Son, entered into our desperate and low condition as man. On the cross, the one who suffered and died was one of the Trinity, according to his human nature. To deny this is to jettison the faith.
Hence, salvation is accomplished by the one ontological entity of the Son of God, now living as man. The Definition of Chalcedon states “the same” eight times in stating that Jesus of Nazareth is the same person as the one who was begotten of the Father before all ages. As the second Adam, he is not a mere man, for the relationship between the first and second Adams is not a parallel. Rather, as man he is ‘Christ according to the flesh, God over all’ (Rom. 9:5) for ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor. 5:19). Thus he could say to Philip ‘he who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9) for ‘I and the Father are one’ (John10:30). At the same time he stated that ‘the Father is greater than I’ (John 14:28), he wept in grief at the tomb of Lazarus, grew weary, hungry and thirsty. He suffered, died and was buried. We could go on.[2]
In short, who is Jesus of Nazareth? What is his personal identity? He is one of the Trinity who has united human nature to himself as his own. Thus all attributions in Scripture refer to the Word, one of the Trinity, according to his natures. This was determined canonically at Constantinople II, where Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius was officially canonized, receiving the approval of the Latin church as well as the Greek.[3]
That this decision, reflective of the biblical witness, was and became the ongoing confession of the whole undivided church is summarized by Richard Muller, who writes of the unio personalis “The hypostatic, or personal, union is maintained in orthodox doctrine through the recognition that the persona is not the sum of two natures but rather is the divine person of the Son. The eternal person, or subsistentia, of the Second Person of the Trinity is the subsistence or independent, individual existent, Christ.”[4]
Thus, John writes “in him was life” ((John 1:4), for he is life. For that reason John wrote his Gospel so that we might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and have life in his name (John 20:31). In every chapter Jesus brings life and gives life, healing the sick, raising the dead, offering eternal life, for the life he is and gives is the life that he receives from the Father (John 5:19-29). He is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25-26). That is why Peter, at Pentecost, says “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24). Here it is likely that Peter means that it was the Father that raised him but since this was Pentecost the power of the Spirit cannot be excluded as neither can Jesus’s own words “I lay down my life that I may take it up again … I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).
I am glad that Dr. Garner affirms his commitment to the ecumenical councils. However, many are doing so these days while at the same time introducing alien beliefs. A correspondent wrote only the other day, “I just saw your article on Ref21 regarding Garner’s adoptionism. I have recently produced two items that may interest you. The first, an article in our seminary’s journal, is about the tendency in contemporary biblical scholarship to read Scripture with Nicaea functioning more as a caveat (“Of course, we still think Nicaea is true”) rather than a control (“How does this text fit within Nicene orthodoxy).” This, as I will argue, is a strategy into which Dr. Garner’s proposal fits. In The Eternal Son, I draw attention to the pervasive neglect in the western church of the developments after Chalcedon and devote several extensive and closely argued chapters to unfold their significance and considered conclusions.[5] Ferrera indicates the problem well when he writes, “it is not surprising that the profound traditional doctrine of the enhypostasis of Christ’s humanity in the person of the eternal Logos should experience widespread and not so benign neglect. Not the least sign of this neglect is the tendency to ‘freeze’ the account of patristic Christology at the Council of Chalcedon and to treat subsequent developments, among which the enhypostasis stands pre-eminent, more or less as mop up operations without decisive import for the interpretation of Chalcedon itself.”[6]
2 Progress or digress?
Dr. Garner expects progress in knowledge. So do I. However, it is possible not only to progress, but also to digress. Alongside his affirmation of the ecumenical councils, Dr. Garner objects to being stuck there. Can we not advance and discover new things, he asks? He misses the point that the councils were not intending to be restrictive. They understood themselves to be confessing the faith once for all delivered to the saints, received from the apostles. They were setting boundaries around the mystery, guarding the gospel (cf. 2 Tim. 1:14). Within those boundaries was a vast area for exploration but outside was destructive error and heresy, ideas that if true would falsify the Christian faith. The issue before us now is not whether advancement can occur; it is whether such claims of advancement are within the parameters of right belief or, instead, a digression that will wreck the faith. It was in such a context that Charles Hodge declared that in the first fifty years of Princeton Seminary there had not been a single new idea.
3 The meaning of adoption: Reading the Bible via pagan Roman practices and inter-testamental literature rather than in concert with the historic biblically based consfession of the church
Apart from heretical sects, the persons who have held that Christ was the natural Son and also an adopted Son are, as far as is generally known, restricted to Felix of Urgel (d. 818), and Simon Episcopius (1583-1643), a Remonstrant Arminian who was closely associated by many with the Socinians.[7] I wonder whether Dr. Garner is happy to be associated with such figures? I have presented the overwhelming evidence in the article. The confession of Christ in the Christian church of the last sixteen hundred years or more, precludes it. As one example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has nothing about it. Nor do the classic Protestant confessions. Markedly the Westminster Larger Catechism is silent too.
Dr. Garner objects to ideas of adoption held in the Christian church and commonly understood views of what it means generally, on the ground that we should go to the “radiant pluriformity” of the Bible and not to these “imposed definitional boundaries.” However, these boundaries were not imposed, they were provided to express and guard the biblical revelation. Moreover, they were drawn from biblical exegesis. This is a serious failure by Dr. Garner to grasp the nature of the church’s defense of the faith. It is reminscent of the Socinians and kindred groups, who urged exclusive attention to the Bible and decried the conciliar pronouncements on the grounds that they had introduced non-biblical language.[8] In reality these people were insisting on their own exegesis of the Bible, deviant as it was, rather than that of the church. Yet, at the same time as he reacts de facto against the church doctrine, Dr. Garner appeals to pagan Roman practices and inter-testamental writings as necessary to understand adoption; presumably these would not be imposed! This privileges pagan Roman practices over the concerted belief of the Christian church in our understanding of holy Scripture. It undermines his case for the “radiant pluriformity” of the Bible. In contrast, the Gospel of John tells us what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God.
As for inter-testamental Judaism, Holland writes, “to suggest that these communities and their documents are the key to understanding the teaching of the apostles would be seriously off target. Many of these groups were openly opposed to the early church and its message of Jesus; can they really be reliable witnesses of the apostles’ teaching? … When the apostles, who claimed to speak for Christ, taught the fledgling congregations, would they integrate the teachings of other religious groups into their writings … the writings of groups they had denounced as heretics and enemies of the gospel of Christ? … Of course, such a suggestion assumes that they knew of the writings’ existence in the first place – and the evidence for this is far from established.”[9]
I will proceed on the basis that understanding is possible and that adoption has a recognisable meaning not merely in today’s world but in Scripture too.
●Adoption is given by grace, legally enacted, to a person who is not a member of the family.
●At the point of adoption the one adopted becomes an adopted member of the family.
●The adopted son cannot adopt (otherwise such ‘adoption’ has no meaning).
●Adoption as such cannot be attained – it is given. If it were attained and if, as Garner contends, our adoption and Christ’s are the same, then we ourselves would attain adoption if we were successful. If he denies that Christ’s adoption and ours are the same, his thesis collapses. Either his thesis collapses or our adoption is merited.
●Christ does not receive by grace what he already has.
●Christ was Son throughout his earthly life. According to Dr. Garner, before the resurrection (including on the cross) Jesus was not yet Son of God par excellence.
●Besides a change of status, adoption entails a change of relation, of the son to the father and vice-versa. Before the adoption the person to be adopted is not a son of the father nor is the father the father of the son. After the adoption that person is legally a son of the father and the father has become legally father of the son.
●If adoption were to involve no change of relation (to the father, to the family) it would be meaningless.
4 Exegetically insupportable
Since Dr. Garner has built his case on his version of biblical theology it may be useful to draw attention to a passage that is crucial to his case. Dr. Garner will not know but I am working through Romans now for the third time in my nearly sixty years as a preacher. Additionally, I have been contracted by a British publisher to write a theological commentary on the book. I will present evidence for a diversity of opinion on what is a highly complex passage, particularly on the clause that is most pertinent to his case, which should suggest caution in building such far-reaching conclusions as he has done.
Romans 1:3-4
There is no explicit reference in Scripture to Christ having been adopted. Nor can such an event be deduced “by good and necessary consequence from Scripture.” The best that can be done is to rest the proposition on an interpretation of Romans 1:3-4 that asserts that in his resurrection Christ was “appointed Son of God in power,” relating it to statements that highlight the evident transformation in his humanity (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:19-49, Phil. 3:20-21).
Romans 1:3-4 is of course an important statement but I have no time to go into the details – contextual, grammatical and linguistic – now. Whether it is a pre-Pauline creedal statement or an original composition of Paul’s does not affect the argument. The most common current interpretation of the clauses ‘born of the seed of David according to the flesh’ and ‘declared /appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness from / since the resurrection of the dead’ is of a reference to Christ’s two successive states rather than to the earlier view that it referred to his two natures. However, the whole passage is highly complex (see Cranfield et al).
The verb ὁρίζω is crucial. No lexicon gives ‘adopt’ as its meaning; neither Liddell & Scott for classical Greek, Bauer, Arndt & Gingrich for NT Greek, nor Louw & Nida for NT Greek in its semantic domains. If we want to be anachronistic, Lampe reports the same for patristic Greek in later years. It carries the general idea of ‘to delimit’ ‘to set boundaries’ ‘to declare’ and ‘to appoint.’ The most common meaning attached to it in the past was ‘declared Son of God in power’ but in recent times a growing consensus has favored ‘appointed.’ While this latter translation in no way entails adoption, and few if any who understand it that way go in that direction, the adoption thesis depends on it and can hardly exist without it.
It is interesting to note that Chrysostom, in his homily on this passage understands the statement to mean “declared to be the Son of God with power.” He goes on to say “What, then, is the being ‘declared?’ being shown, being manifested, being judged, being confessed, by the feeling and suffrage of all; by the prophets, by the marvellous birth after the flesh, by the power which was in the miracles, by the Spirit, through which he gave sanctification by the resurrection, whereby he put an end to the tyranny of death.”[10] A native Greek speaker, he makes no mention of appointment – nor, of course, adoption. He prefers a reference to the resurrection as declarative of Christ’s eternally existent Sonship.
The riposte could be that Chrysostom was but one voice, far removed from us with our greater knowledge of his own language! Let’s see what two very recent commentators have to say. Gorman (2022)[11] writes “The declaration of Jesus’s messiahship/sonship, sometimes understood as his appointment to messiahship/ sonship, is a way of describing the resurrection as God’s vindication of Christ’s death and the commencement of his royal messianic reign. His nature has not changed, but his role in God the Father’s salvation project has been publicly announced with clarity.”[12] An announcement, a vindication, a declaration is the meaning, according to Gorman, although some understand it as an appointment as Messiah.
Beverly Roberts Gaventa (2024),[13] in a highly regarded commentary, states that
“horizein means ‘publicly identified’.”[14] Moreover, she adds in the same place, “Closer examination also reveals some flaws in the identification of ‘parallel’ expressions .. To be sure there are parallel kata phrases, but they are not parallel in meaning.”
On verse 4, she remarks that “every word in this verse challenges interpreters, either because of inherent ambiguity … or because of their distinctiveness in Paul’s letters.”[15] This, I suggest, should caution against overly dogmatic assertions based on this passage, still more where such assertions carry enormous theological consequences, as in Dr. Garner’s proposal.
Coming to the crux, Gaventa continues, “Because of the emphasis on Jesus’s descent from David in v. 3, it is understandable that interpreters have regarded the two statements as contrasting two ways of conveying Jesus’s status (Augustine 59; Luther 5) or as indicating a change in Jesus’s status. Verse 4 is then read as implying that the resurrection made Jesus into something ‘he was not before,’ or ‘that he took a role that was not previously his’ (Dunn 1:14). Yet a change of status ill fits with Paul’s language elsewhere … His discussion of the resurrection always has to do with the intrusion of God’s power as a harbinger of God’s final triumph (1 Cor. 15), not with some change in Jesus’s status or role.”[16] Gaventa continues, “Neither are they separable stages in Jesus’s existence. Verse 4 interprets what the kingdom of Jesus looks like, which is later developed in the reign of grace in 5:21.” Again, in the same place, “The verse’s claim about the cosmic consequences of Jesus’s resurrection opens with the phrase tou horisthentos huiou theou, “publicly identified as Son of God.” Referring to the other instances of the verb, in Acts 10:42, 17:31, she adds, “the implication seems to be that the resurrection demonstrates something about Jesus rather than that the resurrection brings about a change in Jesus. Consistent with that understanding, Chrysostom explains that the verb means “being shown, being manifested, being judged, being confessed” (Hom. Rom. 1:4: NPNF 1 11:340). Moreover, “One further indication that tou horisthentos implies no change in status or ontology (much less an early form of adoptionism) is that the title ‘Son of God’is already conveyed in the introduction (so Cranfield 1:58). By introducing this entire summary of the gospel with the phrase ‘about his Son’ and concluding it with ‘Jesus Christ our Lord’, Paul suggests that the formula has to do with what human beings are able to acknowledge about the gospel, rather than with stages in the development of Jesus Christ.”[17]
She concludes, “The summary culminates with the words ‘ Jesus Christ our Lord, which stand in apposition to ‘his Son’ at the beginning of v. 3. Together those two designations enclose the identifying expansions in vv. 3-4.”[18]
I report these because, without wishing to advocate or commit to the interpretations given by Gorman and Gaventa, or even with Chrysostom, it is enough to show that there are large scale exegetical questions in these verses and, not unexpectedly, there is no unanimity or even consensus. The idea that horizein means ‘appoint’ has not received universal acceptance. Even if that had been so, by no stretch of the imagination would it require adoption. Reference to other recent treatments of Romans highlight similar questions as Gaventa has asked. While a preacher, a reader, or a theologian has to have a working hypothesis as a basis, it would be most unwise to be overly dogmatic. Critical scrutiny is needed as much towards the arguments of Murray as anyone else, even though Murray’s view may be held to have merit. Still more, it is tenuous in the extreme to base dogmatic proposals on such contested passages or to assume that they have paradigmatic significance. In summary, without the (at very best) highly tenuous support of Romans 1:3-4 there can be scarcely any exegetical credibility to Dr. Garner’s proposal, leaving aside the historical and theological problems.
4 Aquinas
Dr. Garner rejects what he terms “Dr. Letham’s insistence upon the person/son coterminosity axiom.” This axiom is not my invention, and the terminology is recognizably and indisputably Dr. Garner’s. He thinks that “this axiom served a useful purpose in confronting the heresy of adoptionism.” It did more than that. Thomas’s purpose was also to confront forms of Nestorianism and Arianism. He was answering the question of whether the human nature of Christ can be adopted.
What does Dr. Garner mean by his phrase “the person/son coterminosity axiom”?! As far as I can gauge, he is referring to my citation of Aquinas, ST 3:23:4. There Thomas is addressing the question of whether Christ could be adopted according to his human nature and answers with a resounding no. He wrote:
Sonship belongs properly to the hypostasis or person, not to the nature; whence in the First Part (Q.32, A.3) we have stated that filiation is a personal property. Now in Christ there is no other than the uncreated person or hypostasis, to whom it belongs by nature to be the Son. But it has been said above (A.1, ad 2), that the sonship of adoption is a participated likeness of natural sonship: nor can a thing be said to participate in what it has essentially. Therefore Christ, who is the natural Son of God, can nowise be called an adopted Son.[19]
In short, Aquinas argues that Christ’s human nature could not be adopted, since persons are adopted, not natures.[20] Our adoptive sonship is participated; we are given to share in Christ’s natural sonship, participating in something other than what we inherently have, a likeness of the original. Christ is the natural Son and cannot participate in something he does not inherently have, his sonship not being a likeness of something else. Moreover, 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.
As Emery indicates, Aquinas, in ST 3a.23.4 and his commentary on John 20:17, was explaining that “Christ’s filial relation to the Father is of a different order to ours: he is thus neither adopted by the Father nor ‘deified’ as the saints are. Thomas’s thinking here is defined by fidelity to the Nicene Creed, and thus the necessity of blocking out Arianism. The Son is not the Son in the same way creatures are so, for he is ‘begotten, not created.’ The Son’s filiation is not on the same level as that of creatures. Rather, creatures take a filial relation to the Father God from the Son, by participating in his personal property.”[21] Aquinas’s argument was not designed for a limited purpose – it is an axiom of classic trinitarian theology.
Aquinas was pre-eminently a biblical commentator. He drew on the history of reflection on trinitarianism and Christology. He synthesized the Greek Christology that had been ‘adopted’ by the Latin church. On many occasions, he cited Constantinople II, John of Damascus, and others of that ilk. As I argue in The Eternal Son, Aquinas was a consolidator of the received Christology and produced “the most concentrated and sustained reflection in the West” of the developed Greek tradition.[22] Additionally, Dominic Legge states, “Aquinas’s thought springs from the rich and fertile soil of sacred Scripture, which he quotes often.”[23]
This statement of Aquinas’s Dr. Garner dismisses when he says “I do not feel bound to Thomas’s axiom.” He may certainly feel unbound, correctly bound supremely to Scripture, but there must be overwhelming reasons for one’s own proposals to trump the weight of the Christian tradition.
If Dr. Garner rejects Aquinas’s argument it is an explicit retraction from the Christology of Constantinople II, despite what he elsewhere affirms. One cannot say one affirms the Christological teaching of the ecumenical councils while rejecting its central arguments. Unless, of course, one asserts that they did not understand adoption and need to be corrected by contemporary biblical theology. In which case, we face the rewriting of the Christian faith.
Is that a project to which Dr. Garner wishes to commit?
5 The crux – who was it who hung on the cross?
The resurrection was a trinitarian event. Indeed, in all events of whatever kind all three trinitarian persons are inseparably involved. This is made clear in the resurrection (cf. Rom. 8:10-11) but it is also so at the cross (Heb. 9:14, Matt 26:46, Luke 22:34,46, Rom. 8:32).
If we follow Dr. Garner’s reasoning, Christ was adopted as the Son of God par excellence at the resurrection, having successfully attained that status and relation. It follows that prior to the resurrection there was something not yet attained, compared with what was to follow. In terms of his attainment as Son of God par excellence that lay in the future. He was on probation; Dr. Garner may not use that term but that is the gist of it. The resurrection is the fulcrum. The entire argument rests on that momentous event, which I have argued elsewhere is of course central, immense in its effect.
But where does that leave the cross? Not surprisingly, Garner hardly says anything about it. It would follow, from his premises, that the one on the cross was a probationer, yet to be adopted who had not yet attained being Son of God par excellence. Yet that person was one of the Trinity according to the flesh!
What does the proposal do to the atonement? If Christ became Son par excellence only at the resurrection, on the cross he was still a probationer. Since, according to Dr. Garner, we only receive saving benefits that Christ has first secured for himself, it would follow that on the cross he was acting in the first instance for himself. On that basis, he could not have acted as our high priest. If that were so, the cross was not a priestly act.[24] Therefore, it was not a sacrifice and, consequently, it could not atone. There would be no salvation. The proposal undermines the gospel.
Dr. Garner may well recoil with disgust, rightly so, but these are the entailments if one posits the idea that Christ was adopted and that this occurred at his resurrection. He may agree with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms on the atonement but, if so, it is despite this proposal, not because of it. Because of the balance being overwhelmingly on the resurrection, Dr. Garner has created an unhealthly and dangerous imbalance. As Gaventa writes, “Paul typically refers to Jesus’s death when he summarizes the gospel.”[25] But with the adoption thesis, there can be no gospel since there can be no atonement, since the cross is but a preliminary, to the major event that follows. On that basis, Jesus should have cried “It is not quite finished!” or “it is almost finished but not yet!” Christianity with an intrinsically inefficacious cross is not the Christianity of the Bible. This is the danger that the adoption thesis creates. Dr. Garner may not himself step into that danger but his proposal opens the door wide to it.
Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal 6:14).
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (Rom. 8:32).
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).
Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:21-22).
I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2).
The gospel according to Paul: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Pet 2:24).
Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb. 9:22).
In him we have redemption through his blood (Eph. 1:7).
In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col. 2:19—20).
The Son of man came … to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).
It is finished! (John19:30).[26]
Given the lack of biblical evidence for the proposal, its historical eccentricity, its conflict with the Christological confession of the church and the insuperable theological problems it entails, the best outcome is that it be withdrawn.
[1] See, Robert Letham and Donald Macleod, ‘Is Evangelicalism Christian?’ Evangelical Quarterly 67/1 (1995):3-33.
[2] See the chapter ‘Christ’s Human Priesthood,’ in my book, The Work of Christ (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993), 105-23. Then ask yourself whether Dr. Garner’s comment about docetism is valid or whether it is a desperate attempt at evasion.
[3] ACO, 4.1.240-44; Richard Price, trans., The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553 (Liverpool University Press, 2009), 2:120-26; cf. 1:143-47; John A. McGuckin, ‘The Theopaschite Confession (Text and Historical Context): A Study in the Cyrilline Re-Interpretation of Chalcedon,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35/2 (1984): 239-55.
[4] Richard A. Muller, “Unio Personalis,” Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 316. Bold text is mine. I am grateful to Sherman Isbell for the following references from a sample of Reformed theologians on the eternal priesthood of the incarnate Son; Zanchi, De incarnatione filii dei, 277 [II.iii, q. 9.v]; L. Trelcatius Jr., Scholastica, et methodica, locorum communium institutio, 52; Polanus, Syntagma theologiae christianae, 2:2405–2407 [VI.xv]; Ames, Marrow of Theology, 130 [I.xviii.17]; Maresius, Sylloge disputationum aliquot selectiorum, 1:75–76 [“De Natura Dei et Divinis Attributis,” XXXVI]; Owen, Works, 1:15, 229 [“Christologia”]; Turretin, Institutes, 2:312 and 317 [XIII.vi.7 and 26]; Martin, Christ’s Presence, 318–319 [“The Dogmatic Element in Ullmann’s ‘Sinlessness of Jesus,’”repr. from BFER 14 (1865): 101]; Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:50–51 [III.31].
[5] For a thorough discussion of the entire period of the Christological controversies from 428-681, interacting with primary and secondary sources, see, inter alia, my book The Eternal Son (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2025), 105-198, especially the short chapter ‘Touchstones of Christological Orthodoxy.’Westminster Seminary refused to publicize the book and at the time of writing it is not listed in its catalogue, although all my other writings are.
[6] Dennis M. Ferrara, ‘“Hypostatized in the Logos”: Leontius of Byzantium, Leontius of Jerusalem and the Unfinished Business of the Council of Chalcedon,’ Louvain Studies 22 (1997): 311-27, here 317.
[7] T.J. Crawford (1812-1875) held to dual sonships, divine and human, but not to adoption. He insisted that ”what we ascribe to Christ is, two distinct relations to God – one proper to his divine nature, and the other proper to his human nature. We apply to them both, indeed, the same human analogy of sonship, because we can find no better analogy to represent them. But we are not to be held on that account as affirming that they are identical. On the contrary, we believe them to be in many respects greatly dissimilar. The one is divine, while the other is a human sonship.”[7] This is “not, therefore, a ‘divided sonship’ which we ascribe to him; but two distinct sonships, differing very materially.” Thomas J. Crawford, The Fatherhood of God Considered in its General and Special Aspects and Particularly in Relation to the Atonement (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1867), 218-19. This is as clear a case of Nestorianism as one could wish to see. However, it was not adoption, since Crawford held that Christ’s human sonship existed throughout his earthly life from the moment of incarnation.
[8] See, as one example, John Biddle, A Two-Fold Catechism (London, 1654).
[9] Tom Holland, Tom Wright and the Search for Truth (London: Apiary Publishing, 2017), 171-72. On the vast diversity of such literature see James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Peabody, MA: Hendriksen, 2015), 2:xxix; James H. Charlesworth and Craig A. Evans, eds., The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 40.
[10] Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, 1, NPNF 1, 11:340.
[11] Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical Studies and Theology, St. Mary’s Seminary & University, Baltimore.
[12] Michael J. Gorman, Romans: A Theological and Pastoral Commentary, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 62.
[13] Helen H. P. Manson Professor Emerita of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary. latterly Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Baylor University.
[14] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Romans: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2024), 27.
[15] Gaventa, Romans, 28.
[16] Gaventa, Romans, 29.
[17] Gaventa, Romans, 29.
[18] Gaventa, Romans, 30.
[19] 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.”
[20] 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.
[21] Gilles Emery OP, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2007), 204.
[22] Letham, Eternal Son, 205-06.
[23] Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2017), 66.
[24] Many today argue that Christ’s function as our high priest only began at the resurrection.
[25] Gaventa, Romans, 27.
[26] See my book The Work of Christ (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993).
