Is there hierarchy in the Trinity part 2

Last updated on: December 9, 2011 at 2:39 am by Roger E. Olson

Is there hierarchy in the Trinity part 2 2011-12-09T02:39:26-05:00 Roger E. Olson

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Is there hierarchy in the Trinity 2

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, this won’t make a lot of sense. I suggest you go back and read that first.

In Part 1 I talked about the traditional theological distinction between the immanent and economic Trinities and how everyone agrees there is hierarchy (i.e., subordination of the Son to the Father) within the economic Trinity. But there is an ongoing debate among evangelical theologians about whether there is hierarchy within the immanent Trinity—God in himself (or themselves).

The controversy began over the claim made by some conservative evangelicals, mostly of the “complementarian” crowd, that the permanent subordination of women to men in the home and church (if not also in society) is justified, if not required by, the permanent subordination of the Son to the Father within the immanent Trinity.

Australian theologian Kevin Giles has published two major books on this subject and he has come very close to accusing the complementarian defenders of hierarchy within the immanent Trinity of heresy. The two books are The Trinity & Subordination: The Doctrine of God & The Contemporary Gender Debate (IVP, 2002) and Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Zondervan, 2006). Giles cites his main opponents in this debate in a lengthy footnote on page 23 of The Trinity & Subordination. Among them are: George Knight, Susan Foh, James Hurley, Wayne Grudem and Andreas J. Kostenberger. Of course, mentioning a bunch of names tends to mask the differences among them. What they all have in common, according to Giles, is that they believe the Son of God is eternally subordinated to the Father within the immanent, ontological Trinity and that this subordination is in terms of authority and not only derived deity.

This last point is where things get sticky and where we have to focus careful attention and critical thought—the difference between two kinds of hierarchy and subordination (“monarchy of the Father): 1) in terms of derivation of deity, and 2) authority over. Many Christians have agreed with the Cappadocian Fathers and other great Trinitarian thinkers throughout church history that the Father is the “monarch” (sole origin or source) of the Son and Spirit who are generated by and proceed from the Father eternally. Orthodox theologians have always agreed that this by no means implies “Subordinationism” as in the Arian and Semi-Arian heresies that argued that the Son (to say nothing of the Spirit) is created in time so that “There was when the Son was not” (Arius’ slogan). The Cappadocian Fathers very carefully distinguished between the monarchy of the Father and Arian Subordinationism.

The real debate among evangelicals is over whether the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father in terms of authority. That is, whether the Son and the Spirit obey the Father within the eternal “councils” of the Trinity. Does the Father’s monarchy within the Godhead mean authority over the Son and the Spirit? The practical issue is whether women should be subordinate to men in terms of obedience because men have authority over them (viz., husbands and pastors) because the Father has authority over the Son. The crucial passage is, of course, 1 Corinthians 11:3 “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” A related controversy has to do with the meaning of “kephale” (head) in this passage. Does it mean “source” or “authority?” Both are possible translations from the Greek and there has been a long, running debate between evangelical complementarians (e.g., John Piper) and egalitarians (e.g., Berkeley and Alvera Mickelson) over this and it has ended in a stalemate—at least for now. So, the debate has largely shifted to the monarchy of the Father and subordination of the Son. The claim made by some conservative evangelicals is that 1 Corinthians 11:3 proves that wives should be submissive to husbands because even within the eternal being of God the Son is subordinate to the Father. Giles and other more progressive evangelicals (including Millard Erickson who, in my opinion, is only “progressive” on the women’s issue) have responded that 1 Corinthians 11:3 proves no such thing and does not even address the issue of authority within the eternal, immanent Trinity. Both sides have accused the other of breaking from “the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity” and of distorting the meaning of scripture.

Now—to bring the story up to date—a group of egalitarian evangelicals has produced something called “The Trinity Statement” and circulated it for evangelical scholars to sign. The summary statement is “We believe that the sole living God who created and rules over all and who is described in the Bible is the one Triune God in three coeternal, coequal Persons, each Person being presented as distinct yet equal, not as three separate gods, but one Godhead, sharing equally in honor, glory, worship, power, authority, rule and rank, such that no Person has eternal primacy over the others.” (Go to www.trinitystatement.com/academic-statement/ to read the longer version of the statement and the theological commentary including footnotes.)

This statement would seem to rule out any sense of the monarchy of the Father and thereby fall into conflict with the Cappadocian Fathers’ explanation of the Nicene Creed. However, I cannot believe it means that. The Creed clearly states that the Son is “begotten of the Father.” Unless a person wants to argue that this refers only to the virginal conception of Jesus Christ (an event in the economic Trinity), it would seem to be the case that the Creed itself affirms the monarchy of the Father in terms of the Father being the source, origin, “fount” of the divinity of the Son and Spirit. There goes the affirmation that “no Person has eternal primacy over the others”—depending on what “primacy” means. See how complicated this is?

Perhaps it is the real “mother of all muddles” (as Christianity Today labeled an earlier evangelical debate over the nature of Christ’s resurrection body.)

“The Trinity Statement” is the work of William David Spencer in consultation with several others—all egalitarian evangelicals.

The concluding paragraph of “The Trinity Statement” is particularly strongly worded: “Suggestions that superiority and inferiority of authority eternally exist among the Persons of the Godhead are problematic. All God’s attributes are essential. We should not posit distinctive, unequal attributes that divide God’s substance. If divine attributes are ranked in a hierarchy, then it necessarily follows that the lower ranked are of inferior quality. Therefore, it is contradictory to say that they share the identical substance (ousia), and yet the degree of each attribute can differ according to rank. Such an eternal distinction makes the Son less in authority than the Father, thereby dividing and separating the one God. Such radical social Trinitarianism ends up as tritheism. Affirming one God in three coeternal, coequal Persons is, therefore, necessary to preserve and perpetuate the one faith once given to the saints.”

My natural inclination is to side with these evangelical egalitarians and sign the statement. After all, almost all the people on the other side of the debate are people I regard as neo-fundamentalists (by which I mean no judgment of value on their characters!). However, I have a few qualms that keep me from jumping into this controversy on either side. Those will be the subject of Part 3. Stay tuned.

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Is there hierarchy in the Trinity? A series on a contemporary evangelical controversy

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