Beebe on the Trinity

This will be a short addition to what I have written on the fact that many of the "Primitive" or "Old School" Baptists in the 19th century were in error on the doctrine of the Trinity. In reading some old issues of the "Signs of the Times" I came across an article by Elder Gilbert Beebe on the Trinity. In this article he also gives his Two Seed view of the eternal manhood of the Son of God, a view that I showed was promoted by Joseph Hussey, and other Hyper Calvinists, at the beginning of the 18th century. I will give the most important and revealing statements he made in that article and make some observations. The article in question was written to respond to a question by a sister Brown. You can read that article in the "Signs of the Times" for May 1st, 1862 (Vol. 30, No. 9) (See here)

Beebe wrote (all highlighting mine):

"We will not attempt to settle or review the positions occupied by Trinitarians, Unitarians, Arians, Sosinocians (sic) and Saballians (sic), or others who have distinguished themselves by their masterly efforts to secure the mastery; but simply give sister Brown and our readers generally the limited views which we have, making no pretension to infallibility, or even desiring that our views shall be regarded with the least favor, any further than they shall be found clearly sustained by the infallible record which God has given of his Son."

This opening statement drew my attention as I was perusing through the issues of the "Signs of the Times" for the year 1862. I was stunned by how Beebe did not want to condemn any of the heresies mentioned, and viewed the disagreements over the Trinity with such a cavalier and dismissive manner. This is perhaps because there was so much disagreement among the "Primitive" or "Old School" Baptists of the 19th century and he did not want to offend any of them and so lose support for his paper and his influence.

Beebe wrote:

"We view the subject thus--First: that all the fullness of the Godhead is embodied in our Lord Jesus Christ...If he were not absolutely, and to the fullest extent of the word, God, we could not scripturally rely on him as our Savior; for he has said, I am God, and beside me there is no Savior. Nor could we worship him without involving the sin of idolatry; for he has said, He will have no other God before him, and has forbidden us to worship any other God. We therefore believe he is the true God and eternal Life. The only wise God our Savior."

Nothing wrong with these remarks. What he says next however is what is highly objectionable. Beebe wrote:

"We believe he is not only God in the most absolute sense of the word, but he is also The Man whose name is The Branch, who shall be a priest on his throne, &c. according to Zechariah vi. 12, 13; that he is the Man of God's right hand and the Son of Man, whom God has made strong for himself according to Psa. lxxx.17."

This is also true. He wrote further:

"And we also firmly believe that he is "The Mediator between God and men; the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time, according to I Tim. ii, 5, 6."

That is also true. Now notice what he says next:

"As God, he is one and identical with the Father, and embodies all the fulness of eternal Godhead. As the Man of God's right hand, and as he is called the Man Christ Jesus, and the Man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts; he existed in this manhood with his Father from everlasting; not in a fleshly nature, until he came in the flesh, but in the perfect and complete manhood indicated in the declarations of scripture referred to; and which we clearly infer from the divine testimony that man was created in his image and likeness, and that Adam is the figure of him that was to come. As the Man Christ Jesus, he embodied, and from everlasting did embody his church, which is his body and the fulness of him that filleth all in all, according to Eph. 1, 23."

In my series on Two Seedism I showed how the idea that Christ as a man with a human soul existed from eternity, being what is meant by Christ being eternally begotten (or created) as the Son of God, laid a foundation for later Hyper Calvinists to embrace the idea that the children of God were also begotten in Christ the man from eternity, being begotten when Christ as man was begotten. This is why their doctrine involved what came to be called "eternal vital union"or "eternal children."

The Two Seeders also taught that Christ as a man was the image or pattern followed in the creation of Adam and Eve, so that when Elohim said "let us make man in our image and after our likeness" he was indicating that God or Christ was a man. That is so close to what Mormons teach. The Bear Creek Association of Primitive Baptists of North Carolina, which I was once a part of, has this article in their articles of faith:

"Art. 2. We believe in the man Jesus being the first of all God's creation and the pattern of all Gods perfection in nature, providence, grace and glory, and in relative union with the Divine Word, and thus united with the whole Trinity."

This is what any Arian, "Jehovah's Witnesses," or other deniers of the Trinity would say.

Beebe wrote further:

"That all these members which make up the fullness of the stature of Christ were in him before the foundation of the world, is proved.--Eph. 1.4...and that they were and are in him, as the fulness of his body and members, is equally clear from the whole tenor of Paul's arguments throughout his epistle to the Ephesians. This is what we call eternal vital union of Christ and the church; and upon this union rests the eternal salvation of all who are or ever can be saved."

"Now as we have proved from I Tim. ii.5, Christ is not only God and Man, but he is also the one and only Mediator between God and men. We do not controvert the testimony that Christ has come in the flesh; but we contend that he was Christ, or the Anointed One before he came in the flesh. That he was made of a woman, made flesh and dwelt among us, is clearly true, and that the fleshly body in which he came was made, of the seed of David after the flesh; in his flesh he took part of the same flesh that his members are partakers of is admitted; but that he was the Man Christ Jesus before he came in the flesh is what we contend earnestly for."  

So, we see, as I suggested in my Two Seed series (all articles now have their own blog; See link on this page), how the belief that the humanity of Christ was begotten or created in eternity past laid the foundation for Two Seedism. If one accepts that Christ was a man before his incarnation, and from eternity past, he will then easily make the jump to saying that all the elect were in Christ from eternity.

It is also a strange idea that Beebe and other Two Seeders believed that there were four and not three eternal distinct entities or persons of the Godhead. There was the Father, the Word, the Spirit, and the Mediator who is both God and man. This is what the Bear Creek article intends when it says that "the man Christ Jesus" was eternally united ("relative union") to the Trinity, which makes God four persons rather than three.

Of course, the truth is, that Christ did not in any sense become a man until he was born of the virgin Mary. He did not exist as "Christ" or "Jesus" either from eternity. He was from eternity God the Son, or the Word of God, possessing only divinity and not humanity. So, if people were "in" Christ from eternity, it could not be that they were in his humanity, but only in his divinity. Neither case is correct. 

No one was literally or actually in Christ from eternity. Paul's statement that believers were "chosen in Christ" from "before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1: 3) does not affirm that those chosen actually existed in Christ from before the world began. "In Christ" in that statement means the same thing as when he says "in love having predestined us to the adoption (or son placing) of children (or sons)." The choice and the ordaining to salvation was done both "in Christ" and "in love." That simply means that Christ and divine love were the impetus, context, or reason behind God's choice and predestination. 

When Paul says "in Him all things consist" (Col. 1: 17) he does not mean that all things are from eternity. The Greek word "en" (English "in") often carries the meaning of "by." "En" is often translated by the words in, by, with, among, at, on, through. "En" can carry the idea of instrumentality.