Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity

by Kevin N. Giles

Overview

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the cornerstones of Christianity. In Jesus and the Father, Kevin Giles wrestles with questions about the Trinity that are dividing the evangelical community: What is the error called “subordinationism”? Is the Son eternally subordinated to the Father in function? Are the Father and the Son divided or undivided in power and authority? Is the Father-Son-Spirit relationship ordered hierarchical or horizontal? How should the Father and the Son be differentiated to avoid the errors of modalism and subordinationism? What is the relationship between the so-called economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity? Does the Father-Son relationship in the Trinity prescribe male-female relationships in the home and the church? "Kevin Giles points out serious problems in the teaching that the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father and argues effectively for the full eternal equality within the Trinity. This book should be read by all who wrestle with the complex but crucial doctrine of the Trinity."—Millard Erickson, author, Christian Theology “By showing that subordinationism is a revival of a heresy that was systematically rejected by the non-Arian Church, the author reinstates the classical orthodox doctrine of the Trinity in all its scriptural majesty and grandeur.”—Gilbert Bilezikian, professor emeritus, Wheaton College “Giles skillfully places before us the stark choice which each generation of theologians must face: will we allow the Bible to speak its message about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to us, or will we use the Bible to advance our own agenda? This important book deserves to be widely read and carefully considered.”—Paul D. Molnar, professor of systematic theology, St. John’s University

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310866381
Publisher:	Zondervan Academic
Publication date:	08/30/2009
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishing
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kevin Giles (Th.D., Australian College of Theology) After 40 years in pastoral ministry, leading Anglican churches Kevin Giles now writes, lectures and works part time in his parish church. Dr. Giles has published numerous scholarly articles and ten books including, Women and Their Ministry, Created Woman, Patterns of Ministry Among the First Christians, What on Earth is the Church?, Making Good Churches Better, and The Trinity and Subordinationism. He is a contributor to the IVP Dictionaries, Jesus and the Gospels and The Later Writings of the New Testament and Their Development. He and his wife, Lynley, have four grown children and five grandchildren.

Read an Excerpt

Jesus and the Father

17
Chapter
1
Contemporary Evangelicals and the Doctrine of the Trinity
In the past thirty years there has been an amazing resurgence of interest in the doctrine of the Trinity. Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox theologians have published numerous studies and books on the Trinity, and they are continuing to appear. Evangelicals at first were not involved, but a change is under way, as this book and others written recently by evangelicals indicate.1 After a long period of neglect, this doctrine is now on center stage as it should be, because it is nothing less than our distinctive Christian doctrine of God.
Most contemporary books on the Trinity have two foci. They look back to the historical sources to see how the doctrine was developed by the best of theologians across the centuries, and they look at the present to see how this fundamental doctrine can be best expressed building on all the work and thought that has gone before.
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, and
Calvin are the most commonly studied historical authorities. One of the most important developments in this doctrinal renaissance has been the recognition that there is much to learn from the early Greek-speaking theologians, particularly Athanasius
1 For example, Millard Erickson, God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the
Trinity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995); Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, The
Trinity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002); Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune
God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); Brian Edgar, The
Message of the Trinity (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 2004); Robert Letham, The Holy
Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2004).
and the Cappadocian Fathers, who for centuries were somewhat forgotten by Roman
Catholic and Protestant theologians. Right at the heart of their doctrine of the Trinity was the belief that God's triunity was to be understood communally. The three persons are the one God in the most intimate, self-giving fellowship. This development has lead to a widespread move away from Tertullian, Augustine, and Aquinas's practice of speaking of God in unity as 'one substance,' an expression which sounds impersonal and abstract, even if this was not intended. In this prevailing 'communal model' of the Trinity, the coequality of the divine three both in unity and in relation to one another as persons is very much to the fore.
Given this starting point for the doctrine of the Trinity, any suggestion that the divine three are ordered hierarchically, or divided in being, work, or authority, is unthinkable. Ted Peters in his 1993 book God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life2 describes contemporary thinking about the Christian
God as 'antisubordinationist trinitarianism.' Similarly, the conservative evangelical Millard Erickson in his 1995 study, God in Three Persons, says that along with other contemporary theologians he believes in 'the complete equality of the divine three.'3 David Cunningham in his 1998 book, These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology, is of much the same opinion. He speaks of 'a radical, relational, co-equality' in modern trinitarian thinking.4 In my opinion the finest study on the Trinity in the last ten years is that by Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian
Doctrine of God: One Being Three
Persons.5 He too emphasizes the coequality of the differentiated divine persons. Building on the work of Athanasius and the Cappadocians, he makes the Trinity itself the monarche (sole source or origin) of the divine three and the Son the monarche of divine saving revelation. He is totally opposed to subordinationism in any form.
In the light of this contemporary stress on the coequality of the divine persons who are understood to be bound together in the most intimate bond of love and self-giving, it is of no surprise that some of the best contemporary expositions of the doctrine of the Trinity see the Trinity as a charter for human liberation and emancipation.
6 If no one divine person is before or after, greater or lesser because they are
'coequal' (as the Athanasian creed says), this suggests, we are told, that all hierarchi-
18 JES US AND THE FATHER
2 Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville: Westminster,
1993).
3 Erickson, God in Three Persons, 331.
4 David Cunningham, These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell,
1998), 113.
5 Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian
Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons. (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1996).
6 Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (New York: Orbis, 1988); Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (New York: Harper and Row, 1981); Catherine LaCugna, God for Us (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991); Erickson, God in Three Persons.
cal ordering in this world is a human construct ref lecting fallen existence, not God's ideal. God would like to see every human being valued in the same way. It is thus the
Christian's duty to oppose human philosophies and structures that oppress people,
limiting their full potential as human beings made in the image and likeness of God.
Millard Erickson is one evangelical who is sympathetic to this agenda predicated on the belief that the persons of the Trinity relate as equals in self-giving love.7
Paradoxically, in this same thirty-year period many conservative evangelicals concerned to maintain the permanent subordination of women have been developing a doctrine of a hierarchically ordered Trinity in which the Father rules over the Son just like men are to rule over women in the church and the home. We are told that the Father is eternally 'head over' the Son just as men are permanently 'head over'
women in the church and the home. On this model of the Trinity, the doctrine of the
Trinity indicates that God has appointed some to rule and some to obey, and this is the ideal. It is not unfair to say that rather than being a charter for emancipation and human liberation, this doctrine of the Trinity suggests that social change and female liberation should be opposed.
The conservative evangelical theologians who think of the Trinity as hierarchically ordered with the Father commanding and the Son obeying insist that what they are teaching is what the Bible teaches and historic orthodoxy endorses. I am an evangelical,
but I am convinced the opposite is the truth. The Bible and the interpretative tradition summed up in the creeds and Reformation confessions speak of a coequal
Trinity where there is no hierarchical ordering.