Posted on by Jack Kilcrease

Gender Wars and the Threat of Subordinationalism

In the second century, biblical teaching about the Trinity very quickly degenerated into the heresy of Subordinationism. The Subordinationist heresy held that the Son and the Spirit are inferior to the Father. Ante-Nicene Fathers held this view partially due to their over reliance on contemporary Platonic metaphysics. Middle Platonists believed that held that any act of self-communication entailed tragic degeneracy. In Middle Platonism, the world of sense was an inferior copy of the forms in the eternal divine mind. Not surprisingly, Christians influenced by Middle Platonism began claiming the Son was an inferior copy of the Father.  

Confusing the Economic and Immanent Trinity

Catherine LaCugna suggests that the failure of Ante-Nicene theologians to make a clear distinction between the economic and immanent Trinity might also have contributed to the rise of Subordinationism.1  For those unfamiliar, the “immanent Trinity” refers to God in himself apart from his missions of creation and redemption. The “economic Trinity” refers to the Trinity as God acts in time in order to redeem humanity in the economy of salvation.2 In the immanent Trinity, all persons are co-equal and co-eternal. There is no subordination whatsoever. Each person fully and co-equally embodies the divine substance (Jn. 1:1, Philip. 2:6, Heb. 1:2-3). 

Nevertheless, in time, the Son and the Spirit voluntarily take on missions to accomplish the Father’s bidding. Jesus speaks throughout the Gospels of his obedience to the Father and his subordination to the Father (Lk. 22:42, Jn. 4:34, 8:29, 14:31). In time, the Son and the Father also send the Spirit (Lk 24:49, Jn. 14:16).3  

Historically, Subordinationists (of both the ancient and modern varieties) tend to confuse the immanent and economic Trinity. In other words, Subordinationists fail to distinguish between statements about eternal relationships among the persons of the Trinity and statements about acts of the different persons in time. Having made this initial mistake, they often proceed to confuse “sending” and “mission” with “subordination.” That is to say, they confuse statements about the Son’s and the Spirit’s missions in time with statements about their eternal ontological status. 

Equality Among the Persons of the Trinity

Scripture is very clear that there is no subordination in the Trinity itself. Rather, the Son and the Spirit voluntarily take upon themselves temporal missions in coordination with the united Trinitarian will.4 In his famous Christological hymn in Philippians 2, St. Paul explains that the Son was co-equal with the Father, but intentionally took upon himself a subordinate role in time through his human nature (Philip. 2:5-8). Similarly, the author of Hebrews writes that “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). 

As a Son, the Second Person of the Trinity is the heir of all that ontologically belongs to the Father. Consequently, the Son cannot be subordinate to the Father in any way. But, for the sake of mission, the Son took on a subordinate role and “learned obedience” (Heb. 5:8) through his human nature.5 Through the communication of activities (genus apotelesmaticum) his divine person participates in the submission of his human nature. Yet, even in the state of humiliation, Christ was not subordinate according to his divinity when considered in the abstract.6  

At no point is the Father a sort of higher authority imposing his will on lower authorities. In themselves, and even in their temporal missions, the Son and the Spirit do not genuinely submit to the Father in this sense. Christ and the Spirit are of the same substance and have the same will as the Father (Jn. 10:30, 14:9, 16:13, Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3). The Son and the Spirit are not different personalities than the Father. Therefore, they do not possess distinct wills that could desire something at variance with the Father. Rather, in the memorable words of Karl Barth, the Trinity is a “threefold repetition.”7 As Lutheran theologian Edmund Schlink notes, there are not multiple wills in God. Instead, the Son’s (and we might add the Spirit’s) will to be sent is identical with the Father’s will to send.8 

Thomas Aquinas argues that temporal missions are extensions of the Son’s eternal begetting and the Spirit’s eternal procession from the Father. The Son’s and the Spirit’s eternal movement from the Father’s being in begetting and procession are poured into time through their respective missions.9  As Aquinas further reminds us, there are multiple forms of sending, some involving equality and agreement, and others involving subordination. 

To use a mundane example: my wife sending me to the store to buy milk does not mean that she is a hierarchical authority to whom I must submit. Rather, purchasing milk is part of a mutually willed mission undertaken in recognition that we as a family are out of milk [you all have no idea how often this happens]. We determine together that it is most convenient for me to get the milk on my way home from work. Likewise, since the persons of the Trinity are equal, theologians correctly characterize the sending of the Son and Spirit as a sending of “equality.”10 

The Problem of Multiple Wills and Denial of Divine Simplicity

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Glenn Butner has noted that the teaching of Evangelical Neo-Subordinationists like Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware creates a scenario wherein the Godhead possesses multiple wills (i.e., a commanding will and submitting will). The assertion that God has multiple wills directly contradicts the scriptural and ecumenical teaching of the singular will of the Father and the Son (Jn. 5:19, 14:9, Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3).11 

Adding to Butner’s argument, Scott Swain has helpfully noted that positing a relationship of eternal subordination between the Father and the Son contradicts the doctrine of divine simplicity. This doctrine is not explicitly taught in the Scriptures. However, divine simplicity is the direct logical implication of the Christian belief that God is the unique creator (aseity) who is not compounded of pre-existent things. If the Son were eternally subordinate to the Father, then God would be compounded of a “part” that commands and another “part” that obeys. Any form of subordination in the immanent Trinity thereby destroys divine simplicity.12

Distinction of the Economic and Immanent Trinity

In many ways Arianism was the nadir of Subordinationism. Blessedly, the Nicene decision, and its ecumenical re-affirmation by Constantinople I, eliminated Subordinationalism from the ancient Church’s formal teaching.13  The affirmation of the co-eternity and co-equality of the divine persons brought with it logical recognition of sharper distinctions between the immanent and economic Trinities.  This recognition did not functionally create two different Trinities, but merely affirmed that God’s relationship with himself is different than his relationship with his creatures. 

To use an analogy: a husband and wife’s relationship with one another is not the same as their relationship with their children. This is true even if how they carry out their vocational mission as parents expresses their relationship with each other.  Similarly, the Father, Son, and Spirit relate to one another as equals through the subsisting relations of begetting and procession. On the other hand, they relate to creatures through the coordinated missions of creation, redemption, and sanctification/glorification. Hence, the two distinct sets of relations (eternal and temporal) are connected to one another and are expressed in one another, yet the former is by no means collapsed into the latter.  

The Contemporary Heresy of the Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son

Two distinct contemporary challenges have arisen to the traditional post-Nicene theology of the immanent and economic Trinities. The first has gained popularity in the contemporary Evangelical world due to the influence of the Calvinist-Baptist theologians Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware.14  As we already mentioned in passing, their position might be described as a form of Neo-Subordinationism. With Nicaea, both Grudem and Ware agree that the persons of the Trinity are ontologically co-equal and co-eternal.15  Nevertheless, they hold that there is a hierarchy within the Trinity in the form of an eternal functional subordination of the Son and the Spirit to the Father.16  

In support of the eternal functional subordination of the Son and Spirit, both theologians quote statements of Scripture pertaining to the economic Trinity and the obedience of the Son to the Father in his state of humiliation. Neither theologian makes any effort to counteract the argument that he is confusing the immanent and the economic Trinities. Indeed, Grudem’s discussion appears especially odd since he seems unaware of the distinction.  At one point he asserts that his position is actually no different than historic Christian orthodoxy. 

In order to prove this claim, Grudem proceeds to quote a series of statements by the later Church Fathers and more modern Reformed theologians as a way of demonstrating that they held to something like the eternal functional subordination of the Son and Spirit.17 Nevertheless, taken in context, most of the statements (with the possible exception of a quote from Ware) refer to the economic and not the immanent Trinity. Therefore, they in no way demonstrate that the larger catholic tradition supports Grudem’s theology.

The Subordination of the Son in Support of the Subordination of Women

The primary motivation for Grudem and Ware’s unusual doctrine of the Trinity appears to be their view of gender and their fundamental belief that reality is centered around the framework of the law.18 Basing themselves partially on a social model of the Trinity, Grudem and Ware reason that relations between human persons should reflect how divine persons interact with one another. Both theologians view social hierarchy as intrinsically good. In particular, they want to suggest that the male/female relationship should reflect eternal subordination within the Trinity. Just as the Son is ontologically equal to the Father, but is eternally subordinate to him, so too, women are ontologically equal to men, yet should submit to them.19  

We will save our critique of Grudem and Ware’s view of gender for a later chapter. Here we will confine ourselves to critiquing their essentially law-centered outlook. Grudem and Ware see the law not only as God’s good will to order his creation. Even more importantly, the law is the most fundamental principle within God’s very being. God’s eternal relationships within himself are not based on grace and spontaneous response to grace. Rather, they are legally ordered hierarchical systems of obedience and command. Scripture does clearly teach that the law and its attending hierarchies are necessary in a fallen world. However, the law is not the fundamental structure of God or his creation. Rather, grace is always more fundamental to the divine being than law.

Equality in the Freedom of Self-Sacrifice

Hence, like the Christian renewed in God’s image, it might be said that God is “lord of all” so that he can be “servant of all.”20 The Father from all eternity possesses the fullness of the divine ousia, so that he can surrender the whole of his being in begetting the Son.  Likewise, the Son possesses the fullness of the divine ousia and, therefore, is able to spontaneously and fully return himself to the Father in the spiration of the Spirit. As Reformed theologian Peter Leithart correctly observes:

To put it another way, the trinitarian life is a rhythm of self-giving and return within the life of God.  Trinitarian life is a life given over and returned as glorified life. The Father loves and submits to the Son, and the Son to the Father, and the Son to the Spirit, and so on. But this self-giving of one Person to the others is always met with a return gift: the Father’s gift of Himself to the Son is met with the Son’s gift of Himself to the Father. ‘Self-sacrifice’ is met with a returning of the self-gift that eternally and ever refreshes and renews the triune fellowship. Gift and return, we might say, are simultaneous in the life of God, since the Father who gives the Son in the Spirit is in the Son who returns the gift to the Father in the same Spirit. There is not even a moment of ‘stasis’ or death, since ‘resurrection’ life is offered back from the moment the original life is offered.21

The Son entered into the matrix of the law in order to fulfil it (Gal. 4:4). He can accomplish this task on behalf of humanity precisely because he possesses the fullness of the divine being and does not grasp after anything (Philip. 2). Notice that the economic Trinity becomes a hierarchy of mission only once Christ placed himself under the law in order to fulfil it through his human nature.

Without law, there is no hierarchy, since the act of unconditional promise is one of unilateral self-surrender to the other.  In turn, promise produces freedom, and gives rise to uncoerced self-surrender. The assertion and enforcement of the law is only necessary when self-surrender and the spontaneous response breakdown. Then order must be re-established through hierarchy and coercion. 

  1. Catherine LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 24-29. ↩︎
  2. Fred Sanders, The Triune God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 144-147. ↩︎
  3. See discussion in: Kevin Giles, Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 242-274. ↩︎
  4. See similar argument in: Kevin Giles, The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God & the Contemporary Gender Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002). ↩︎
  5. Augustine, On the Trinity, 1.7; NPNFa, 3:24.  Also see: D. Glenn Butner, The Son Who Learned Obedience: A Theological Case Against the Eternal Submission of the Son (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018). ↩︎
  6. Martin Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971), 215-30. 215-230. ↩︎
  7. CD I/1.350. ↩︎
  8. Edmund Schlink, Ecumenical Dogmatics, 2 vols., trans. Matthew Becker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2023), 1:451. ↩︎
  9. ST 1, q. 43, art. 1; FDP, 1:219-220. ↩︎
  10. ST 1, q. 43, art. 1; FDP, 1:220. ↩︎
  11. Glenn Butner, “Eternal Functional Subordination and the Problem of the Divine Will,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 58, no. 1 (2015): 131-149. ↩︎
  12. Scott Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 85-86. ↩︎
  13. Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 157. ↩︎
  14. See: Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, 2nd edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020); Bruce Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005). ↩︎
  15. Grudem, Systematic Theology 2nd edition, 273-281; Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 41-42. ↩︎
  16. Grudem, Systematic Theology 2nd edition, 299-308; Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 21, 45-51, 65-67. ↩︎
  17. Grudem, Systematic Theology 2nd edition, 311, 314-317. ↩︎
  18. See: Wayne Grudem, Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishing, 2006); idem, Systematic Theology 2nd edition, 323-324; Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 140-147. ↩︎
  19. Grudem, Systematic Theology 2nd edition, 323-324; Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 140-147. ↩︎
  20. Freedom of a Christian (1520). LW 31:344. ↩︎
  21. Leithart, Deep Comedy, 89.  ↩︎

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

Cover image: “Preface of the Most Holy Trinity,” St. Mary’s on Broadway, November 11, 2018, accessed June 18, 2024, https://stmarypvdri.org/2018/11/11/preface-of-the-most-holy-trinity/.