Adoption: exploring a neglected doctrine of salvation

Advances in the study of the Christian doctrine of Adoption have provided new insights into its biblical foundation and systematic function as an organising metaphor of salvation. Despite a historical neglect and misunderstanding of the subject, contemporary debates now arise regarding Paul’s cultural source behind his metaphor of adoption, or huiothesia; whether humanity is created with an original relationship of sonship to God prior to the fall; and whether Christ himself was “adopted" by the Father at his resurrection, in order to make believers’ adoption possible. Given that Christian believers often identify as “sons” or “daughters" of God in their spiritual identity, these doctrinal issues become crucial in our understanding of what grounds our spiritual-familial identity, and demand investigation into how adoption functions as an organising framework of salvation and faith using the language and context of family.

Through conducting a critical survey of existing knowledge on the doctrine of adoption, this paper assesses its historical development as a doctrinal concept, considers the cultural background of Paul’s huiothesia metaphor, and explores adoption in a systematic manner, considering its cosmological, soteriological, and eschatological implications. Further it will consider how adoption qualifies as a soteriological concept, and reflect on its place in a Reformed understanding of the ordered experience of salvation, or ordo salutis. In doing so, it presents the case for a synthetic, Roman-Jewish source behind Paul’s concept of huiothesia; argues in favour of the constitutive sonship of created humanity and for the concept of the qualitative, obedient-sonship of Christ, against the concept of his resurrection-adoption to make believers’ adoption possible; and, finally, it presents adoption as a distinct and valuable organising concept of salvation, by showing how it possesses crucial soteriological markers, and suggests a union-with-Christ centric model of the ordo salutis with adoption as a primary benefit of salvation.