Be It Further Resolved: Institutionalizing Departure from Orthodox Christology and Trinitarianism
In his article, The Enduring Resolution for the 2026 Advent Christian Ministers, Tom Loghry reports on a recent Executive Council vote to recommend a resolution that affords Advent Christian clergy the freedom to maintain their credentials in service to the Advent Christian Church through December of 2027, provided they (1) agree with the NAE Statement of Faith and (2) submit in writing their differences with the DOP 2026 to their Ministerial Committee.
I love Tom and admire his steadfastness and endurance in his proposals over the last year. He is the best of us, and even when we disagree, I confidently believe he proposes such changes with a clear conscience in the pursuit of what is best for the Advent Christian Church. However, the proposed enduring resolution undermines orthodox Christian beliefs in several ways, especially by institutionalizing tolerance for views that depart from the ecumenical creeds, even as the denomination seeks to adopt a clearer standard in the 2026 Declaration of Principles.
Here are four key points of conflict I find with the resolution:
1. It explicitly permits Social Trinitarianism as a permissible difference.
Tom suggests that Social Trinitarianism is an acceptable difference among others alongside infant baptism or views on war. In reality, Social Trinitarianism is not a minor alternative but a modern redefinition that distorts historic orthodoxy. Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son (EFS) reads God’s opera ad extra into God’s opera ad intra. In other words, God’s external works define God’s internal works. Nicene theology views the external works of God as undivided, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acting together in all external operations. I recommend the following article to gain a better understanding of Inseparable Operations.
Second, it redefines the very nature of the divine persons in a way that risks tritheism. Consider the following critique from Barrett’s Simply Trinity in chapter 3,
→Nicene view: Persons are distinguished by eternal relations of origin (Father unbegotten, Son begotten, Spirit spirated). There is one divine will according to the one simple essence.
→Social Trinitarian view: Persons are redefined as “distinct centers of consciousness and will,” forming a “society” or “community” with mutual relationships. Some versions explicitly affirm three wills.
This resolution compromises divine simplicity and the unity of God. Redefinitions of the Trinity by Moltmann, Craig, Moreland, Grenz, Ware, and Grudem treat the Trinity as analogous to human society.
Third, social trinitarianism was developed to serve social and political agendas, not to retrieve biblical orthodoxy. Barrett points out in the chapter cited above that theologians Moltmann, Volf, and Boff redefined the Trinity as a “community of love” or “social program” to support egalitarian and liberationist agendas, complementarianism, democracy over monarchy, liberation theology, socialism, and feminist and anti-patriarchal concerns. Regardless of where you land on those issues, they are not tied to the nature of God. This proposal grants considerable latitude on the same grounds, not to retrieve biblical orthodoxy but to achieve political expediency.
Fourth, this represents “Trinity drift,” not faithful development within broader evangelicalism. Tolerating Social Trinitarianism is not “being broad” but rather participating in a broader twentieth-century shift, from which many (Barrett, Holmes, Ayres) see as a departure from classical Trinitarianism. Consider these words from Stephen Holmes, “The explosion of theological work claiming to recapture the doctrine of the Trinity that we have witnessed in recent decades in fact misunderstands and distorts the traditional doctrine so badly that it is unrecognizable.… [These are] thoroughgoing departures from the older tradition, rather than revivals of it” (Barrett 2021, 92).
2. It allows denial of Christ’s two natures and two wills.
To reject Christ’s two natures while affirming his “full divinity and full humanity” is a serious departure from historic Christian orthodoxy. Reviving ancient errors such as Nestorianism or Monophysitism, it echoes the anthropocentric, pantheistic, and adoptionist Christologies of the last couple of centuries.
First, it revives modern errors that collapse the distinction of Christ’s two natures. Berkhof writes, “A far-reaching and pernicious distinction was made between the historical Jesus, delineated by the writers of the Gospels, and the theological Christ… The supernatural Christ made way for a human Jesus; and the doctrine of the two natures, for the doctrine of a divine man.” A position that affirms “full divinity and full humanity” while denying two natures confuses the natures or treats them as loosely united in one person without preserving their distinct properties. These are the exact errors Chalcedon (451) was designed to exclude. By grandfathering ministers who reject the two-natures framework, the resolution effectively treats Chalcedonian orthodoxy as optional for existing clergy.
Second, it denies the biblical and soteriological necessity of two natures. Without a true human nature, Christ could not represent humanity or bear humanity’s sin and death as our substitute (2 Cor. 5:21). Without a true divine nature, the Son’s work would lack infinite value and redemptive power. This leaves atonement without an adequate foundation. To merge the natures either destroys the integrity of human nature or undermines God's immutability.
Third, it conflicts with the Chalcedonian Definition and the Church’s consistent confession. “to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of the natures being in no wise taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons” (Chalcedonian Definition). One might suggest, out of ignorance, that this is a speculative philosophical construct. Instead, our forebears provided this guardrail against error because Scripture reveals a mystery that transcends full human comprehension.
Fourth, it leads to practical heresies. A view of Christ that affirms his full divinity and humanity while denying two distinct natures often collapses into one of the following errors: human nature is absorbed or divinized, or the union is treated as merely moral or as a relationship rather than as personal (hypostatic).
The denial of two natures, while affirming the full divinity and humanity of Christ, is a return to the egregious errors the early Church rejected at Chalcedon and to 19th-20th century liberalism, revived under new names. This position does no justice to Scripture’s portrayal of the God-man, it undermines atonement and severs continuity with the universal church.
3. It subordinates doctrinal fidelity to institutional charity and continuity.
This resolution creates a formal two-tier system by establishing a mechanism in which currently credentialed ministers retain their credentials by affirming the older Statement of Faith and prior enduring resolutions. New ministers have a higher threshold–orthodoxy. This approach elevates the practical need for pastoral staffing (a real pain point) and the desire to avoid conflict over the obligation to maintain a shared and consistent confession of faith “once for all delivered to the saints.” In essence, the proposal says that orthodox precision on the Trinity and Christology is important enough to adopt a new declaration, but not important enough to require it of existing pastors.
Side note: I’m keenly aware of our clergy crisis. I’ve written about it and continue to expend a great deal of time and energy on this matter. I think the prevailing–even if unspoken–belief is that it is better to get an untrained, ill-equipped, and questionably called pastor to fill a church’s pulpit than for that church to go years without a pastor. It’s not my fault, and probably not yours, that our churches are unequipped to handle long pastoral vacancies. It is our problem. This proposal does nothing to address the problem and actually undermines Tom’s efforts and those of many others across various functions.
4. Transparency and disclosure are treated as sufficient safeguards instead of correction.
This resolution requires dissenting clergy to report their differences with the DOP 26 to their local Ministerial Committee. However, it does not require them to cease teaching or preaching those dissenting views, nor does it require conformity. When a minister holds heretical or erring views, especially on essential orthodoxy-defining beliefs, confessional denominations require repentance, correction, or removal from the teaching office. This is a permanent accommodation of heresy at worst and heterodoxy at best, establishing false teaching as a protected category within our ranks. This resolution weakens our responsibility to safeguard the deposit of faith and allows misleading teaching to continue under denominational sanction.
Conclusion
Does charity require us to protect error, or to pursue truth together—even when doing so is costly? A couple of years ago, a friend told me I had gotten fat. I had gained nearly sixty pounds over eleven years. The comment hurt, but it was true. My heart wanted to justify my habits rather than face them. I’ve since lost thirty pounds through better eating and consistent lifting. I needed someone willing to speak a hard truth in love.
The proposed Declaration of Principles 2026 is, in many ways, the medicine our denomination needs. This enduring resolution, however well-intentioned, functions more like a sympathetic friend who would rather keep us comfortable than see us get healthier.
Tritheism: “Belief in three gods. No one claims to be a tritheist, but one can fall prey to tritheism by virtue of an overemphasis on the persons or a redefinition of person in modern categories. Social trinitarianism has been accused of tritheism because it says there are three centers of consciousness and will in God (the ingredients for tritheism). Social trinitarians deny that their position leads to tritheism.” (Barrett 2021, 325))
Inseparable Operations: “Since the persons of the Trinity are indivisible in essence, they are also indivisible in their external operations. Having the one, simple will in common, they perform a singular act in any external operation.” (Barrett 2021, 321)
Appropriations: “Since God is one in essence (simple), every operation is the one, singular, indivisible work of the Trinity. Yet a particular work in creation or salvation may be appropriated by a person of the Trinity in a special way that is consistent with that person’s eternal relation of origin. Appropriations draw our attention to each person’s distinctiveness. For example, the Father is Creator, which conveys he is the origin in the Trinity.” (Barrett 2021, 319)
Nestorianism: “This heresy consisted essentially in the view that there were two Christs. The first of these, who has existed from all eternity, according to Nestorius, is the divine Son to whom Scripture attributes deity and all its prerogatives. The second, however, Nestorius depicted as a merely human person, Jesus, who suffered and died on the cross, slept on a pillow, and so on… The church officially rejected this view at the Council of Ephesus (431) for at least two reasons. First, Nestorianism reduced the difference between Christ and other human beings to one of degree rather than one of kind. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, according to the teaching of Scripture, all dwell within the Christian (John 14:23; Rom. 8:9). If Nestorius was correct, therefore, and Jesus’s dignity and authority flowed simply from the Son’s indwelling in him, then it seems that the Christian could become Jesus’s equal if only he enjoyed a fuller measure of the divine indwelling. Indeed, if Nestorius was correct, it seems that every Christian will become Jesus’s equal in heaven when the divine indwelling in every believer is perfected… Second, this Nestorian diminution of the difference between sinners and the crucified Christ wreaked havoc on the Christian doctrine of the atonement, for the macabre spectacle of the Son of God agonizing on the cross seems conceivable only if human beings could not otherwise obtain salvation. The Protestant tradition of mainstream Christianity, accordingly, holds that Christ’s sacrifice was, in fact, indispensable to human salvation because the slightest sin against an infinitely benevolent God merits infinite punishment… The sufferings of a finite, human being, it seems, could never fully compensate for this infinite debt of punishment; this is why, among other reasons, sinners must suffer for their sins eternally. Only a divine person’s sacrifice, rather, would possess a value that is infinite and consequently sufficient to atone for the infinite guilt of sin.” (The Evangelical Dictionary of World Religions, 120-121)
Monophysitism: “the doctrine that the incarnate Christ had only one nature (Greek mono, “one,” and physis, “nature”). The Council of Chalcedon (451) declared the view heretical, countering that if Jesus was both fully divine and fully human, he needed both a divine and a human soul, lest he be conceived of as God in the empty shell of a human body.” (The Evangelical Dictionary of World Religions, 330)