The 1888 Message: An Introduction

Some charge E. J. Waggoner with teaching Arianism (or at best, semi-Arianism). Certain rules of evidence must be considered:

1. He deserves fair treatment—to be accurately reported;
2. since Ellen White upheld his message in hundreds of endorsements, to mis-represent him would involve her credibility as well;
3. his meaning must be probed in harmony with his over-all message. How could Ellen White support his ministry if he was in error in his basic concept of the deity of Christ?

Some 30 statements in his Christ and His Righteousness (Pacific Press, 1890) forcefully assert His full divinity and eternal pre-existence. One isolated and misconstrued statement forms the basis of the charge of Arianism (or semi-Arianism):

1. Christ... must receive the same honor that is due to God, and for the reason that He is God (note, capital G; p. 8).
2. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."... This divine Word is none other than Jesus Christ (pp. 8, 9).
3. The Word [Christ] was "in the beginning" (p. 9).
4. He was the Divine Word, not simply before He came to this earth to die, but even before the world was created (p. 9).
5. [Christ's] "goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity" (p. 9).
6. In many places in the Bible Christ is called God (p. 9).
7. Christ's "name shall be called ... the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (p. 11).
8. God the Father... is addressing the Son, calling Him God (p. 11.).
9. As the Son of the self-existent God He has by nature all the attributes of Deity (p. 12).
10. Christ Himself taught in the most emphatic manner that He is God (p. 13).
11. So truly was Christ God, even when here among men, that when asked to exhibit the Father He could say, Behold Me (p. 14).
12. He was God (p. 15).
13. Note the expression, "the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father." He has His abode there, and He is there as a part of the Godhead (p. 15).
14. The use of the present tense implies continued existence. It presents the same idea that is contained in the statement of Jesus to the Jews, "Before Abraham was, I am" (p. 15).
15. [Christ] declared His name to be "I AM THAT I AM" (p. 15).
16. "It pleased the Father that in Him all fullness dwell." What this fullness is, which dwells in Christ, we learn from the next chapter, where we are told that "in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (pp. 15,16).
17. Christ possesses by nature all the attributes of Divinity (p. 16).
18. The Father... says to the Son, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever" (p. 18).
19. We are to honor the Father by honoring the Son (p. 19).
20. Our object in this investigation is to set forth Christ's rightful position of equality with the Father, in order that His power to redeem may be the better appreciated (p. 19).
21. He Himself says, He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (p. 21).
22. [Christ's] "goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity" (p. 21).
23. He is of the very substance and nature of God,... the express image of His Person, the brightness of His glory, and filled with all the fullness of the Godhead (p. 22).
24. He has "life in Himself (p. 22).
25. He possesses immortality in His own right, and can confer immortality upon others (p. 22).
26. Life inheres in Him, so that it cannot be taken from Him (p. 22).
27. Christ [is] God in the beginning, sharing equal glory with the Father (pp. 22,23).
28. Christ "is in the bosom of the Father;" being by nature of the very substance of God, and having life in Himself, He is properly called Jehovah, the self-existent One (p. 23).
29. Let no one, therefore, who honors Christ at all, give Him less honor than He gives the Father (p. 24).
30. The fact that Christ is a part of the Godhead, possessing all the attributes of Divinity, being the equal of the Father in all respects, as Creator and Lawgiver, is the only force there is in the atonement. It is this alone which makes redemption a possibility (pp. 43, 44).

We know that Christ "proceeded forth and came from God" (John 8:42), but it was so far back in the ages of eternity as to be far beyond the grasp of the mind of man (p. 9).

This statement, "proceeded and came forth from the Father," is repeated on p. 19 and on p. 21 where the phrase is added, "to finite comprehension it is practically without beginning."

We cannot attribute infallibility or perfection to Waggoner; Ellen White did not even claim either for herself. But if an author writes thirty emphatic statements that Christ was God in the highest sense "in the beginning" and thus eternally pre-existent, and then adds an apparent contradiction, we must inquire, what was his overwhelming emphasis? What did he mean?

1. The heart of this alleged "Arianism" is a quotation from the words of Jesus in John 8:42 where He says, "If God were your Father, ye would love rat: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, for he sent me."
2. It may be said that Jesus' phrase had reference only to His incarnation. However, Ellen White applies the repeated phrase "I was brought forth" in Proverbs 8:22-31 to Christ in His pre-incarnation "from the beginning" (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 34). Jesus takes the infinite step of disclosure, saying, "Before Abraham was, I am" (vs. 58). This claim to be "I AM" became the occasion to try to stone Him (vs. 59). Could He liken His disclosure of Himself in "proceeding forth" in the incarnation to His previous disclosure of Himself to the universe, as Patriarchs and Prophets suggests? In The Story of Redemption, pp. 13-15, Ellen White repeatedly affirms Christ as "the Son of God" from eternity, equal with but subordinate to the Father; but she was not Arian. Her belief in Christ's eternal Sonship does not imply there was a time when He was not, as some mistakenly assume. Waggoner was in agreement with her.
3. Scripture likewise does not limit the word "Son" to His incarnation: "unto the Son," the Father says in Psalm 45:6, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever" (cf. Psalm 2:12). To deny Christ's eternal Sonship is to destroy the significance of the Father's love revealed in John 3:16. Peter already knew to declare Christ the "the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). Waggoner's idea was that although Christ was truly "in the beginning," eternally pre-existent, He was not eternally revealed in His relationship to the Father. Could it have been the entrance of sin, or its possibility, that rendered the disclosure ("brought forth") necessary? Did sin require a revelation to finite creatures of the reality of the Godhead that was already eternally true? If this was Waggoner's thought, it did not mean that Christ had a "beginning," but only that He was revealed to the understanding of the universe.
4. In 1898 Ellen White stated in The Desire of Ages, p. 530 that in Christ is "life original, unborrowed, underived." Those 30 statements above show that Waggoner bravely, courageously taught the same view eight years earlier: "life inheres in Him," "He possesses immortality in His own right," "He has life in Himself."
5. Can Waggoner's concept fairly be denigrated as Arianism? Only at the expense of short-circuiting his own sanity in his 30-odd statements denying it, and also scuttling Ellen White's enthusiastic support.
6. There remains a word that some seize as Arianism—Waggoner's statement on p. 22: Christ "is the only-begotten Son of God, He is of the very substance and nature of God, and possesses by birth all the attributes of God." Never did Ellen White say that Christ experienced "birth" before His incarnation, although He was "the First-born" (The Desire of Ages, p. 51; from Colossians 1:15, prototokos, Greek, "the Pre-eminent One"). His birth in Bethlehem did not give Him "the attributes of God." He came with them.
7. Does the phrase "only begotten Son" on Waggoner's part imply Arianism? (Six times it occurs of Christ in the New Testament). Ellen White and Jones and Waggoner believed in the Sonship of Christ as part of the Biblical portrayal of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which is commonly called the "Trinity." Waggoner never used the word "Trinity," and neither did Ellen White. He did not speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as "identicals" who only role-played three assignments. He believed and consistently taught the truth of the Godhead in the same terms as did Ellen White; any isolated inconsistency cannot fairly invalidate the overwhelming evidence.