The 1947 Longacre Paper: Charles Longacre was born in 1871. He was intimately acquainted with Ellen White, Uriah Smith and other Adventist pioneers. He was one of six pall bearers selected at Ellen Whites funeral. He also attended the 1919 Bible Conference and was a member of the Bible Research Fellowship which was organized in 1940 by the North American Bible Teachers. Under the chairmanship of L.L.Caviness in 1944. He was offered the opportunity of presenting a paper at Pacific Union College on The Diety of Christ. in January 1947. A sermon on the same subject was presented shortly thereafter at the Takoma Park Church in Washington, D.C. Longacre began his discourse by presenting the various views of Christs Godhood. After discussing the two extremes of both an only human Christ and a God the Father Christ, he continued, We now come to the third group which hold that Christ was the only begotten Son of God, the Father, and that He was such from the days of eternity and was the only one who proceeded directly from God, being begotten by the Father before all creation, before anything was created in an empty universe. This group hold that the Son of God is equal to the Father, is the express image of the Father, possesses the same substance as the Father, the same life as the Father, the same power and authority as the Father, but that all these attributes were given to the Son of God by the Father, when He was begotten by the Father. This group believe that the Son of God existed in the bosom of the Father from all eternity, just as Levi existed in the loins of Abraham, as the apostle Paul said; And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchesedec met him. Heb. 7:9, 10. (Charles S. Longacre, The Deity of Christ, paper for the Bible Research Fellowship Angwin, California January 1947, page 3) He read, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last Rev 1:11, then commented. Not everything has a beginning nor does everything have an ending. God Himself never had a beginning and He will not have an ending. He is the self-existent One, who never had a beginning. Eternity itself never had a beginning and never will have an ending. Space has no beginning and no ending. Everything else had a beginning, but not all things that have a beginning are going to have an end. Ibid, page 4. Christ always existed in the bosom of the Father, even before He was Begotten as the Son of God, and God and His prophets counted things which are not, as though they were even before they were manifested. Thus we read that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and that Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot... was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times. So Christ existed in the bosom of the Father from all eternity but was manifested when He was begotten by the Father as His Son, as the apostle Paul says, before all creation. Ibid, page 19. But Christ, the only Begotten of the Father, made in the express image of the Father in person. God not only appointed [Him] to be the Saviour of men, but He appointed Him heir of all things, being made so much better than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said He (God) at any time, Thou art My son, This day have I begotten thee? Heb. 1:2-5. Here we are told that the expression Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten thee, refers only to Christ and not to any of the angels. Then there must have been a time, a day, when the Son of God was begotten by the Father. On that day, the Father saith unto His only Begotten Son: Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever ... therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands. Heb. 1:8-10. Ibid, page 8. The Spirit of Prophecy says that there was and still is a difference in rank between God - the Father, and Gods Son. We read in Vol. 1 of the old Spirit of Prophecy [p.17] thus: Satan in Heaven, before his rebellion, was a high and exalted angel, next in honor to Gods dear Son. The implication is that God stands first in honor, His only begotten Son comes next, and Lucifer was next to the Son of God. If God and His Son were co-eternal, co-equal, and co-existent so that there was no difference between them then we should not say Lucifer was next to the Son of God but next to God as well. Ibid, page 9 Of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, it is said in the Scriptures, He is the only Begotten of the Father. The Son of God was not created like other creatures are brought into existence. He is not a created but a Begotten Being, enjoying all the attributes of His Father. Christ Himself explains His own relationship to the Father as follows: As the Father had life in Himself, unborrowed, underived, original, independent, and immortal, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself. John 5:26 Ibid page 4. God only hath immortality. He alone is the only self-existent God. But He gave His Son when He was Begotten the same life he had in Himself, therefore when Christ offered His life as a ransom for the sins of the world, He and He only could make an atonement for all the sins of all the world, because he made an infinite sacrifice, and it required an Infinite sacrifice to atone for all the sins of mankind and angels who had sinned, in order to satisfy the demands of the law of God and infinite justice. Christ had unconditional immortality bestowed upon Him when He was Begotten of the Father. Angels had conditional immortality bestowed upon them when they were created by Christ in the beginning. Angels are immortal but their immortality is conditional. Therefore angels do not die but live on after they sin just as Satan or Lucifer lives on in sin. But since Lucifer and the fallen angels only enjoy conditional immortality, God ultimately will destroy them and take from them the gift of immortality which Christ bestowed on them when He created them. Whatever God bestows he can take away whenever He sees fit. Ibid, page 7. What kind of life did the Father have in Himself? In God is life original, unborrowed, underived, immortal, independent. He is the source of life. Christ says, As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given - the same life, original, unborrowed, underived life to the Son. It was given to Him by His Father. Christ was made the source of life just as the Father was the source of life. Christ had the same life the Father had in Himself in His own right. He did not have to derive or borrow it, it was now original with Christ just as it was with the Father. Christs life was independent of the Father, hence not dependent, derived, or borrowed. He could bestow and give life and create just as the Father could, but the Father gave this life to His Son. Ibid, page 10. When this same life the Father had in Himself was given by the Father to His Son so He too had it in Himself, we are not told. Nor does it make any difference how long it was before anything was created, the fact remains that the Son of God proceeded from the Father, that He was in the bosom of the Father, that His life, underived, unborrowed was given to Him by the Father, that the Father ordained His Son should be equal with Himself; that the Father invested His Son with authority, and that the Son does nothing of Himself alone. Ibid pages 10-11 If it were impossible for the Son of God to make a mistake or commit a sin, then His coming into this world and subjecting Himself to temptations were all a farce and mere mockery. If it were possible for Him to yield to temptation and fall into sin, then He must have risked heaven and His very existence, and even all eternity. That is exactly what the Scriptures and the Spirit of Prophecy say Christ, the Son of God did do when He came to work out for us a plan of salvation from the curse of sin. Ibid page 13. It was this last point that Longacre, like Washburn, saw as the critical factor under attack by the Trinity. Our life is finite - His is infinite. Ours is mortal - His is immortal. Our spirit is finite, His is infinite. We cannot take up our life after we lay it down. He could, so long as He did not commit sin. But if he had yielded to temptation and become guilty of sin, - and this was possible - His very existence, his eternal existence and heaven itself was possible of being forfeited. If it was not, then He never took a risk; and we are told He risked all, even heaven itself, as an eternal loss. This being so, then His corporeal body was not only put in jeopardy but His Deity. Because, if He could exist as a separate Deity, independent of His corporeal body, after He yielded up His life on Calvary, then He did not risk heaven nor would He have suffered all as an eternal loss. Since His spirit did not go to heaven, but the Father committed Christs spirit to the tomb and it slept with His body in the tomb, and all that comprised the life and the intelligence of Jesus remained with His body in the sepulchre, we must conclude that if Christ had sinned all that ever belonged to Christ would have forever remained in the tomb and Christ would have suffered the loss of His eternal existence. Then God would have taken back to Himself what He gave to His son, namely, the same life He gave His only Begotten Son when He proceeded from the bosom of the Father in the beginning when He became the First-born before all creation, as Paul puts it. Ibid, page 15. Longacre was the last proponent of the original Adventist understanding and belief in the begotten Son of God. With his death, the way was made clear to proceed with advancing the orthodox Trinitarian doctrine of one God composed of three separate but equal, co-eternal persons, unbegotten, unproceeding, and unbiblical.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 15:35:12 +0000
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