This novel adoption thesis cannot survive exegetical, historical, and especially metaphysical scrutiny without compromising the unity of the incarnate Christ or the integrity of the atonement, it must be rejected as incompatible with Chalcedonian Christology.

Why Add My Voice To this Watershed Issue?

I cannot remain on the sidelines of this debate because the stakes for how we understand our Savior are simply too high. If Dr. Garner is correct, then Christ’s eternal, natural sonship is insufficient for our salvation without a historical, messianic adoption; if his critics are correct, this novel framework implies that the Jesus Christ, in the days of his humiliation, related to the Father as a son only according to his divinity, but that the same person could not relate to the Father as a son according to his humanity because adoption was not yet attained. Because this debate threatens to redraw the very boundaries of confessional orthodoxy, it demands our careful attention.

The Recent Context:

This month, Drs. Robert Letham and Lane Tipton wrote critical essays against Dr. David Garner’s adoption thesis. Dr. Garner responded to those essays.

Just prior to Drs. Letham and Tipton publishing their pieces, I voiced my own disagreement with the adoption thesis.

This latest installment of mine interacts with portions of Dr. Garner’s response to Drs. Letham and Tipton. (I remain no less critical of the adoption thesis.)

Before delving into my interaction with Dr. Garner’s response, it would be helpful to read a short section from my previous piece. In two sentences I summarize the adoption thesis, then put up some fence posts for more effective interaction. I reprint these portions immediately below, set off by the date of publication.

4/21/2026

At the heart of the adoption thesis is that Christ is the adopted Son par excellence. His resurrection was his official “adoption” into his glorified office, which makes our salvation and adoption possible.

Some Initial Ground Rules:

In the Incarnation, the eternal Son of God assumed a complete human nature, becoming what he was not without ceasing to be who he was. This union of two distinct natures within a single hypostasis does not create a second subject; rather, the Son remains the sole acting agent, his divine essence eternally consubstantial with the Father. Guided by the Spirit, the Church confesses that this union exists without confusion, change, division, or separation. Therefore, while the predicate “man” accurately describes the Son in his mediatory office, it does not necessarily imply change to his immutable divine substance.

Similarly, Christ was not publicly justified until his resurrection. That is to say, this new status of vindication before the world was not possessed during Christ’s state of humiliation. Accordingly, we may rightly say Christ “attained” justification, yet without implying a second person or a change in his divine nature. This demonstrates that attaining a new status, in and of itself, does not necessarily drift into heterodoxy but rather, in this case, accurately reflects the transition from humiliation to exaltation.

Applying These Distinctions:

Because the incarnation was a free and contingent act of God (i.e., it was neither necessary nor impossible), and Christ was vindicated in his humanity, any charge against the adoption thesis that is based solely upon contingency or attaining a new status will be difficult. If so, then any successful refutation of the adoption thesis must argue within these theological fence posts. To ignore them in an attempt to defeat the thesis is to undermine the possibility of the incarnation and Christ’s vindication in the Spirit.

Confessional Orthodoxy Does Not Preclude Implicit Heterodoxy:

Just as critics of the adoption thesis cannot rely solely on arguments about historical contingency, its supporters cannot defend themselves simply by affirming the Council of Chalcedon. The core issue is not whether proponents explicitly accept Chalcedonian Christology, but whether the logical implications of their adoption thesis actually undermine it. We must ask whether the claim of Christ’s adoption destroys Chalcedonian orthodoxy in a way that the incarnation and resurrection do not. I believe it does.

End of 4/21/2026

All quotes below are Dr. Garner’s, with the exception of one, which is attributed to Thomas Aquinas. Unless otherwise marked, Dr. Garner’s quotes are from his June response to the two distinguished scholars.

From page 203 of Dr Garner’s Book, SONS in the SON:

“Jesus’ newly attained Sonship marks the satisfaction of the Father…”

“…the messianic Son became the resurrected/adopted Son…”

“Without the improvement of the Son onto eschatological eschatological-adoptive sonship, his life lacks soteriological efficacy!”

For Dr. Garner, God is satisfied by Christ becoming the adopted Son. This “improvement” lends efficacy to our salvation. Indeed, if Christ isn’t adopted, we cannot be saved (per the adoption thesis). This deserves more attention given the extraordinary claim. So, before getting into Dr. Garner’s responses to Drs. Letham and Tipton, I will make one comment regarding the quotes above from Sons in the Son.

According to the doctrine of the hypostatic union, Christ’s two natures do not act independently; rather, the single divine Person always acts. To maintain that Christ is one person, orthodoxy entails that the eternal Son of God is the sole subject of every divine and human action. Because a person acts according to a nature, when Jesus experienced human limitations, such as thirst, sleep, or grief, it was always the one divine person of the Son experiencing these according to his assumed human nature.

This orthodoxy is strained under the adoption thesis. By asserting that Christ was not a son in human existence at the moment of the incarnation, the adoption thesis creates an artificial, metaphysical rift. It implies that the divine Person related to the Father as a son only according to his divinity, but that the same person could not relate to the Father as a son according to his humanity (for human adoption was not yet attained). Consequently, the adoption thesis artificially isolates Christ’s assumed human nature from his divine personhood, essentially treating his humanity as a detached instrument rather than a fully integrated, assumed human nature in one hypostasis. It is as though Christ’s humanity needed to catch up in the resurrection, resulting in an eschatological “improvement” unto two distinct modes of sonship, one divine and natural, and one human and adopted.

With that concern aside for the moment, we can now turn our attention toward Dr. Garner’s interaction with his peers. (At the close, I will expand on the metaphysical difficulties and raise mediatory ones as well.)

Dr. Garner’s Responses:

The following quotes are directed from Dr. Garner to Dr. Letham. Afterward, we will examine a few quotes directed at Dr. Tipton.

“The crux now concerns whether or not the resurrection of Christ can or should, in any sense, be considered his adoption, particularly in light of Romans 1:3–4”

A declaration of status, in this case the status of Son, does not imply its prior absence. After all, the declaration of the believers’ justification on the Last Day will serve to vindicate the righteousness they already had in Christ, rather than creating it anew; it is a republication of the believer’s prior status. Similarly, Christ’s resurrection should be seen as an epistemic vindication and demonstration, not an ontological creation. Out from the resurrection, Christ was demonstrated with power as the Son of God, which in no way demands he became the Son at the resurrection. Rather, the eternal Son became the God-man Son (without need of “improvement”) at the incarnation. To argue otherwise is a clear case of eisegetical proof-texting. Consider Matthew 3:17, where a voice from heaven declares at Jesus’ baptism: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Are we to infer that Jesus failed to please his Father prior to this moment of declaration, or that he became the Son through baptism? The same applies to the Transfiguration in Matthew 17. Therefore, if consistency demands the adoption thesis for Romans 1, then this same methodology forces one to accept multiple adoptions of Christ. We can further note by the same hermeneutical principle of “the analogy of faith” that Jesus was both Lord and Christ prior to the resurrection; yet in Acts 2:36, Peter declares those designations according to Christ’s resurrection and ascension to God’s right hand (in fulfillment of the Davidic covenant). Accordingly, the pronouncement pertains not to becoming Lord but being bodily enthroned as such!

The primary alternative is to invoke speech act theory, arguing that this declaration dynamically “brings about” Christ’s Sonship. This, too, is an unwarranted assumption derived outside the text. Romans 1 requires neither a declaration of new sonship nor a performative mechanism that transforms the natural Son into an adopted one. It is simply a demonstrative pronouncement openly confirming Christ’s eternal Sonship, which grounds his incarnation. In short, Christ, the singular Subject, is the eternal Son of God, both in his humiliation and his exaltation, which presents no possibility of adoption.

“Yet if the gift in redemption is Christ himself, he cannot give what he does not possess; he does not yield what he does not attain.”

Dr. Garner applies this principle to a completely new area, the doctrine of adoption. He argues that believers can only be adopted by God because Jesus himself went through a process of messianic adoption and vindication in his resurrection. Dr. Garner is certain there is no salvation apart from Christ being adopted in his resurrection. The traditional application of the axiom Garner draws upon was primarily used to affirm Christ’s full divinity, that he must himself possess what he bestows upon us (2 Peter 1:4). An integrally related patristic principle (“what is not assumed is not redeemed”) addressed the incarnation, teaching that Christ assumed a complete human nature, not just a human body but also a rational soul, so that humans could be fully redeemable. It is crucial to maintain these two patristic principles by distinguishing nature (what we are) from status (how we relate to God).

These two ancient church principles stand together and share the same logic, namely, Christ cannot give what he does not have, and he cannot save what he did not become. These ideas match perfectly and cannot be put asunder because both are about Christ’s actual being. The first ensures he is fully divine to save us, and the second ensures he is fully human to represent us. Therefore, we can legitimately test Dr. Garner’s adoption thesis by interacting with the first principle’s patristic twin, which is equally inconvenient for the adoption thesis.

In the incarnation, Christ assumed a human body and soul. Whereas the body is redeemed unto future resurrection and glorification, the soul is redeemed unto regeneration, sanctification, and eventual perfection. In short, humans are redeemed in their two essential and constitutive parts, as body-soul composites. In this sense, redemption tracks the hypostatic union.

Adoption, by contrast, is not an essential property of human nature. Accordingly, it’s not redeemable in any sense. Adoption has a relational and legal import, which is to say it has both forensic and filial dimensions. Through adoption, sinners transition from children of wrath to co-heirs with Christ (or “sons in the Son”). With this objective forensic verdict comes a new relational reality, which is the filial dimension of adoption.

Because it is meaningless to say that our adoption is redeemed in the ontological sense applied to body and soul, applying this principle in an extended way creates a category mismatch. However, it is perfectly sensible to say that bodies and souls are redeemed (hence the incarnation). Because adoption is not an essential property of a person (one remains the same person with or without adoption), it is not something that even can be redeemed. Neither the legal verdict nor the altered relationship in adoption changes the essential person; therefore, the identical person becomes a child of God through gracious adoption.

Through his complete redemptive work, entailing his incarnation, death, and resurrection, Christ secures and mediates our redemption, which includes our adoption. Consequently, there is no compelling reason to argue that Christ himself was adopted. But if Christ did undergo adoption, then why not effectual calling too, in his humanity, of course? In other words, why not extend the first patristic axiom to this component of the ordo salutis to avoid arbitrariness?

To be clear, Dr. Garner does not explicitly invoke this second patristic principle (“what is not assumed is not redeemed”). However, given that the two principles are inseparable, we can fairly interact with this second axiom to test the integrity of the thesis. Because Dr. Garner grounds the first principle in a strict rule of ontological transfer, he binds himself to the internal logic of the entire patristic framework.

Therefore, by applying the same logic of redemptive transfer to the second axiom, the category mismatch becomes glaringly evident:

(1) Christ redeems only what he assumes
(2) Christ assumes only a human nature, which consists of body and soul
(3) adoption is not a component of human nature, but rather a relational-legal status

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