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:	9780310266648
Publisher:	Zondervan Academic
Publication date:	05/28/2006
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
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

Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity

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By Kevin Giles

Zondervan

Copyright © 2006 Kevin Giles
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-310-26664-5

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Chapter One

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 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. 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 much tolearn from the early Greek-speaking theologians, particularly Athanasius 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 Life 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." 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. 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. 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. 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 hierarchical ordering in this world is a human construct reflecting 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.

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.

When evangelical theologians are in dispute with one another about important doctrines such as baptism, eschatology, the church, the gifts of the Spirit, or women in leadership, resolution is seldom found. It is not found because there are no objective criteria to judge the competing interpretations of Scripture. There is no broad consensus among the great theologians of the past as to what the Scriptures are teaching on these doctrines and no defining comments in the creeds and confessions to which appeal can be made. It is very different with the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ. How the Scriptures are to be interpreted on these two fundamental doctrines is discussed in great detail by the great theologians of the past such as Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, and Calvin, and their conclusions are now enshrined in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds and in the Reformation confessions. Both evangelicals who endorse hierarchical ordering in the Trinity, and those who vehemently oppose hierarchical ordering, agree that this doctrinal tradition is the best guide we have for understanding what the Scriptures teach on the Trinity and the person of Christ. The dispute today among evangelicals is about what these authorities actually say on these matters. The two sides both claim that the great theologians of the past and the creeds and confessions are on "their side." In this book we explore this dispute on the basis that we are agreed that we do have objective criteria in these authorities to judge who is reading Scripture aright.

The Post - 1970s' Evangelical Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son

George Knight III in his highly influential book New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women, published in 1977, formulated an entirely new set of theological arguments in support of the permanent subordination of women. Men and women are created equal, yet women are differentiated from men by the fact that God has assigned to them a subordinate role. These differing roles given to men and women are based on the "order of creation," a hierarchical social order given by God before sin entered the world. For this reason male leadership and female subordination is the ideal. Thus the exhortations to women to be subordinate in the New Testament, unlike those to slaves, are transcultural and unchangeable. In developing his novel case, Knight also argued that this God-given permanent subordination of women in role and authority in the church and the home was supported and illustrated by the Trinity. For him the Son is eternally subordinated in role and authority to the Father, despite the fact that the Father and the Son are both fully divine. He thus speaks of a "chain of subordination" and of an eternal subordination of the Son that has "certain ontological aspects." This new teaching on the Trinity came to full fruition in 1994 with the publication of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. The impact of this book on evangelicals cannot be underestimated. Over 135,000 copies have been sold, and the abridged version, Bible Doctrine, with exactly the same teaching on the Trinity and women, has sold over 35,000 copies. The former is now the most widely used systematic theology text in evangelical seminaries and Bible colleges in North America and most other English-speaking countries.

In this book Grudem has one chapter on the Trinity where he argues that the Father and the Son are both divine, yet the Son is eternally subordinated in role and authority to the Father. In another chapter on male and female relationships, he grounds women's permanent subordination on the eternal subordination of the Son. For Grudem the Son's role subordination, like that of women, is not a matter of who does certain things, as we might expect on seeing the word role, but rather the matter of who commands and who obeys. He writes, "The Father has the role of commanding, directing, and sending" and the Son has "the role of obeying, going as the Father sends, and revealing God to us." These words disclose the key issue: the Son is set eternally under the authority of the Father. This understanding of the Trinity, he emphatically claims, is historic orthodoxy. The doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son is also found paradoxically in the book God Under Fire: Modern Theology Reinvents God. Here twelve leading conservative evangelical scholars argue that many modern-day theologians have replaced "the transcendent and relational God of historic Christianity" with a God depicted according to their own thoughts on what God should be like. What they want to reaffirm is "catholic Christianity," "the tradition," or, "traditional theology," which reflects the plain teaching of Scripture. The chapter on the Trinity is written by Bruce Ware, the senior associate dean of the school of theology and professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky. He claims that historic orthodoxy teaches that the Son of God is "equal in being, eternally subordinate in role." The Trinity is a "functional hierarchy." There is an "eternal relationship of authority and obedience grounded in the eternal immanent inner-Trinitarian relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." If God is rightly called "Father," then Ware holds the divine Father must be set over the divine Son, for human fathers always have authority over their sons. It is contemporary theologians, he argues, who speak of a coequal Trinity who have broken with historic orthodoxy!

Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology was the first systematic theology to enunciate the doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son in function/role and authority.

(Continues...)

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