Ordained Servant: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church

In Ephesians 1:5 the Apostle Paul described adoption as the predestined goal toward which God in Christ is directing his elect. Adoption is the pinnacle of gospel privileges. It is often presented in Scripture as the highest honor of God’s people. In spite of this fact, the church has often fallen short of treating adoption in the full scope of its biblical and theological connections. In Sons in the Son, David Garner presents a full-orbed biblical and systematic theology of this key doctrine. While his treatment of adoption raises difficult theological questions at points, he makes his readers engage prayerfully with many texts of Scripture while setting forth the glory of gospel adoption to the praise of God’s grace. This book is not only worth reading, but it is engaging enough to cause meditation-induced insomnia.

Garner’s book is thorough in its scope. He divides his ten chapters into three sections, which treat, in turn, the meaning of the term “adoption” and its history, exegesis of the five New Testament passages in which the Greek term for “adoption” appears, and development of the doctrine of adoption in light of biblical and systematic theology. Garner models well the need for systematic theology to build upon sound exegesis that is sensitive to the flow of redemptive history. His ordering of his treatment of biblical texts and his sensitivity to all three persons in the Trinity throughout make his work exegetically clear and theologically refreshing. Garner argues that adoption is not merely one gospel benefit flowing from union with Christ, but that adoption virtually subsumes and magnifies simultaneously the legal aspects of redemption in justification and its transformative aspects in sanctification (307). Following self-consciously the example of Richard Gaffin, Garner provides a solid model for the proper interdependence among exegesis, biblical theology, and systematic theology. This makes his work an admirable endeavor that helps readers engage thoroughly with the relevant biblical material.

Sons in the Son raises at least two potentially problematic issues. The first and most obvious one is Garner’s controversial argument that the primary basis of the adoption of God’s elect is Christ’s adoption by the Father at his resurrection (chapter 7). He argues that believers cannot receive the adoption as sons unless Christ was first adopted for them (194). This means that Christ is both the natural Son of God by virtue of his divine nature and the adopted son of God in his human nature by virtue of his resurrection. While aware of the potential of being charged with adoptionistic Christological errors and attempting to steer clear of them (179, 191), the author’s primary contention is that Christ’s eternal Sonship, while vital, has no redemptive characteristics (197).

However, the primary reason why most Christians (Reformed or otherwise) have argued that Christ is the natural Son of God while we are his adopted sons is due to the unity of Christ’s person. Contrary to Garner’s contention (203), Christ does not need to bear adoption on our behalf any more than he needs to experience the new birth in our place in order for us to be born again. Authors such as John Owen argued that Christ’s incarnation was an inexact parallel to and ground for our regeneration. In like manner, the unity of Christ’s person seems to demand that we are adopted sons because we are united to Christ as the natural Son. This point requires more interaction than is possible in this review, but readers should note the unconventional Christology involved in this theological construction.

The second problematic issue is Garner’s presentation of historic Reformed treatments of adoption. From the classic period of Reformed theology, Garner cites only Calvin and Turretin, while appealing to the Westminster Standards without historical context for the development of adoption in those documents. The result is that he leaves readers primarily with the choice between an order of salvation in which justification is the ground of union with Christ and all other gospel benefits (as with Michael Horton, et al.) or an order in which justification, adoption, and sanctification retain no logical priorities in relation to each other as long as they all evidence union with Christ (302–3). Neither of these options, however, represents a classic Reformed orthodox ordo salutis, in which justification, adoption, and sanctification flowed from union with Christ and retained a logical order in relation to each other.

In addition to this, Garner represents Reformed orthodoxy as largely stumbling through the doctrine of adoption without knowing where to place it in the theological system. This fails to take into account substantial treatments of adoption in older Reformed systems of theology, especially from the mid-seventeenth through the early eighteenth centuries. While this does not make such treatments right or wrong, it is hard to justify Garner’s dismissal of post-Reformation dogmatics on this subject without adequately exploring the post-Reformation development of the doctrine. It also seems off base to assert that “every aspect of redemption possesses inaugurated and future consummative eschatological realities” (136). While this is true for adoption and sanctification, it is not for other redemptive benefits, such as regeneration and, as most Reformed orthodox authors argued, justification.

David Garner’s Sons in the Son will make readers think deeply about an oft-neglected topic in Christian theology. While they should be aware that the doctrine of adoption as presented in his work is not the only option available historically, his treatment of the subject is likely the most extensive and thorough one yet produced. The subject matter and the character of this book make it demand our attention, whether we agree with all of the author’s arguments or not. This reviewer hopes that reading Sons in the Son will both help readers wrestle theologically with the doctrine of adoption and read more deeply in the historic Reformed tradition concerning the application of redemption.

Ryan McGraw is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and serves as an associate professor of systematic theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Ordained Servant Online, February 2017.