Response to Janice..the exegesis of Grudem is the one based on 2,000 years of interpretation, not on a novel 20th century one. The feminist interpretion is as ridiculous as the claim that the sin of Sodom is a sin against hospitality!

Janice Money - 06 September 2008 10:57 AM

Hi Mike,
And that, I think, is the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son.  They are united in will and purpose.  (John 10:30 - “I and the Father are one.") There is no eternal submission because there is no need for submission because they are one.  To say that there is eternal submission is to say that they are not one.

Hi Janice,
As John has pointed out the Trinity is difficult both to understand and describe for us humans. Often arguments can centre around the meaning of words rather than helping oneanother grapple with revealled scripture.
Can I ask you two questions? Did Jesus submit to His Father’s will during His incarnation on Earth(eg"Take this cup from me. Not my will be done but yours’")?  If you answer yes (which I think Kevin Giles does in his first book) then when did this submission begin - was it confined between Bethlehem and Calvary, or did it extend to when the Father sent the Son?

ANdrew

Andrew Read - 08 September 2008 08:52 AM

Can I ask you two questions? Did Jesus submit to His Father’s will during His incarnation on Earth(eg"Take this cup from me. Not my will be done but yours’")?  If you answer yes (which I think Kevin Giles does in his first book) then when did this submission begin - was it confined between Bethlehem and Calvary, or did it extend to when the Father sent the Son?

Hi Andrew. Could I suggest you ask these questions in a separate thread since they are really off topic to this one?

I dispute your assertion, Robert, that Gruden’s interpretation is based on the wisdom of the centuries.  Schism and sects have been born out of assertions that there was less than ful lequality between Father Son and Holy Spirit.  As I suggested in an earlier post if there is to be any idea of Subordination by the Son, then it has to do with his shedding his divinity to become human, rather than his submission to the will of his Father who sent him.  This is the orthodox teaching, Grudem’s is the novelty.  As to the sin of Sodom, that is a matter for a whole new thread - let’s not go there here.

It just illustrates so well what I have said before that we are capable of going to extreme lenths exegetically to find an interpretation that suits our pre-determined positions.

Angus Johnson - 08 September 2008 10:27 AM

Andrew Read - 08 September 2008 08:52 AM

Can I ask you two questions? Did Jesus submit to His Father’s will during His incarnation on Earth(eg"Take this cup from me. Not my will be done but yours’")?  If you answer yes (which I think Kevin Giles does in his first book) then when did this submission begin - was it confined between Bethlehem and Calvary, or did it extend to when the Father sent the Son?

Hi Andrew. Could I suggest you ask these questions in a separate thread since they are really off topic to this one?

Angus, I disagree with you entirely. Let the question(s) remain here!

Andrew

I believe the father and son have only one will, so to talk of submitting to wills is meaningless.  I’m not entirely sure what to make of Jesus’ prayer there though…

Dannii
I agree with your view about the will of the Father and the Son.  The expression Jesus uses in his prayer reflects the subordination he took on in becoming human.  The church has had many struggles in trying to understand the mingled humanity and divinity of Jesus. 

The question Andrew asks about when his submission existed reflects that issue - my answer to his specific question is that his submission would be confined to the period of time between Bethlehem and Clavary because it relates to his humanity when he was necessarily locked into time and space.  Outside that time The Son exists with God in complete unity.

Cheers
JOHN

John Clapton - 08 September 2008 05:01 PM

my answer to his specific question is that his submission would be confined to the period of time between Bethlehem and Clavary because it relates to his humanity when he was necessarily locked into time and space.  Outside that time The Son exists with God in complete unity.

So the Father and the Son weren’t united (completely) during the Son’s time on earth?

Mike

This apparent conundrum is created by the limits of anthropomorphic language when applied to divinity.

John Clapton - 08 September 2008 05:31 PM

This apparent conundrum is created by the limits of anthropomorphic language when applied to divinity.

Or you’re wrong to say they have only one will between three persons.  And the Biblical writers are correct in talking about the Father, Son and Holy spirit each having their own will, but aligned perfectly.

So we really can talk about the Father willing the Son to be sent, and the Son willing to be sent, and the Father and the Son willingly sending the Spirit (which mind you - happens after the Son returns to heaven), and the Spirit willing to be sent.  It is right to talk about the Son submitting his will to his Father, and the Father willingly giving Glory and Honour and Power to the Son.

So as there are three persons, there are three wills.  All wills in perfect alignment and unity.  All persons different, with different roles, yet part of the united Godhead.  Three in One.  The Trinity.

It seems extreme to discard differences in the persons of the Trinity (including wills), as well as language used to describe the Trinity for thousands of years - just so we don’t have to deal with the possibility of submission in a relationship.

And just to push a little further - once again you’re suggesting that we can’t really know God because of the limits of human language. 

Mike

Mike,

The New Evangelical Subordinationism: Reading Inequality Into the Trinity by Phillip Cary

Not everybody knows that for about fifty years after the Council of Nicaea, the church was in a kind of civil war over the doctrine of the Trinity. The subordinationists did not just go away; among other things, they asked tough questions. One of them was how Nicene Trinitarians could say there was only one God when they also said that Christ is God and the Holy Spirit is God. Unlike the subordinationists, for whom “one true God” in the highest sense means only the Father, Nicene Trinitarians have a serious problem here.

The Nicene solution to this problem is what puts modern evangelical subordinationism outside the pale of Trinitarian orthodoxy. The ancient Nicene theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is done by the Father, Son, and Spirit working together with one will. The three persons of the Trinity always work inseparably, for their work is always the work of the one God. There is no act of the Father in the world which is not an act of the Son and the Holy Spirit as well. This does not mean there is no difference between the three. We could even use a modern term and call it a difference in roles, though the ancient theologians called it a difference in order. For there is an order in the work of the three persons which reflects the order of their origination: every work of the Trinity originates with the Father, is carried out by the Son, and is completed by the Holy Spirit. For instance, the work of salvation is initiated by the Father sending the Son, who becomes incarnate, lives and dies and rises again for our redemption, so that the Holy Spirit also may be sent to sanctify and perfect the church, the body of Christ, for eternal life.

But here is the crucial point: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not just three persons who decide to cooperate, like Peter, Paul, and Mary agreeing to do something together. Their agreement is essential and necessary, part of their very being, or else they would actually be three Gods just as Peter, Paul, and Mary are three humans. Hence the difference in roles in the Trinity cannot mean anything like a relationship of command and obedience, where one person’s will is subjected to another’s. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always necessarily of one will, because there is only one God and therefore only one divine will. And where there is but one will there cannot be the authority of command and obedience, for that requires one person’s will to be subordinate to a will other than his or her own.

Now we can see why modern evangelical subordinationists cannot be consistently Nicene, despite their best intentions. They affirm the Nicene creed, and with it the equality of Father, Son, and Spirit in divine being or essence. But they also insist that there is a distinctive kind of role differentiation in the Trinity, a subordination in role though not in being, so that the Father has the role of giving commands and the Son has the role of obeying them. The problem is that this is only conceivable if the Son’s will is at least conceivably different from the Father’s. But Nicene orthodoxy says it is not. There is only one will in God. The Son’s will cannot be different from the Father’s, because it is the Father’s. They have but one will as they have but one being. Otherwise they would not be one God. Such are the logical consequences of Nicaea, which orthodox Trinitarians understand but evangelical subordinationists do not. If there were relations of command and obedience between the Father and the Son, there would be no Trinity at all but rather three Gods.
...
One of the striking things about the original Nicene theologians, in fact, is that by being faithful to the purpose of clarifying the divinity of Christ, they ended up undermining the ancient commitment to a metaphysical hierarchy of being. The ancient church fathers were hierarchicalists to a man. They believed in hierarchical subordination throughout the universe: women subordinate to men, servants to masters, subjects to rulers, inanimate to animate, animals to humans. But despite themselves, what they found at the utmost height of the chain of being was equality in the very essence of God. And the reason was Christ: the biblical witness did not allow them to make Jesus Christ less deserving of worship and adoration than God the Father. We too can expect countercultural results if we give up the willful reading of our own social agendas into the doctrine of the Trinity and submit ourselves to biblical teaching.

Mike, I am not seeking to reject the language that has been used for thousands of years, nor am I trying to discard the notion of the three persons of the Trinity.

I am however, seeking to resist a line of logic that is intent on one outcome - the subjugation of women to men because of some so-called divine order.

All this talk about seperate wills that are aligned but different seems quite unnecessary for me to have a sound understanding of God.  The only purpose seems to me to be to create a basis for something else.

Thanks Janice.  Your post came as I was writing.  It says very clearly what I have always understood about the orthodox teaching of the Trinity.  One of the words the Orthodox church uses is “community” to describe the interconnectedness of the three, but Philip’s language is superbly clear.

Janice Money - 08 September 2008 06:34 PM

Mike,

The New Evangelical Subordinationism: Reading Inequality Into the Trinity by Phillip Cary

Hi Janice

I agree (I think) with most of what is being said.  Most especially about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together, and not being three persons in co-operation. 

But there seems to be an inconsistency in his argument.  He argues that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have different roles, work together, and are “one God” (No disagreement here).  But he argues against a differing of wills saying “They have but one will as they have but one being. Otherwise they would not be one God”.  Why does this not apply equally to their roles?  Why does he not argue that their roles are the same, as they have but one being, otherwise they would not be one God?

Or conversely, why can they be different in roles (yet united in action) but not will (yet still united)?

In fact - doesn’t saying they have different roles suggest they have different wills?  Again - part of their differing roles is the Father willingly sending the Son, and the Son willingly being sent.  Different wills here, but united in action and purpose.

Again - you have to make sense of the Biblical data that talks about the roles of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Mike

It’s funny that this convoluted theory of subordination of the Son to the Father should be so fiercely striven for by those who seem to have no other ground for keeping women at bay.

On a slightly other track to do with the Nicene Creed - there was and remains a divide between the Orthodox church and the west in relation to the wording of the Creed about the Holy Spirit because the Orthodox believe that words that we mostly use imply a subordination of the Holy Spirit.  The Anglican Church has passed a General Synod resolution somewhere, I think, to use the Orthodox formlae so as not to offend.  Sadly, it must have been before they printed the APBA as it still has the old form.