Tag: Subordinationalism

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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  

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Review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease

Part III: The Second Part of Our Epic Critique

Making of Biblical Womanhood presents several convincing historical arguments that deconstruct the assumed uniformity of biblical womanhood throughout the church’s history, but Barr falters when attempting to address modern controversies of the twentieth century.  Barr’s conclusion that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy “became important because it provided a way to push women out of the pulpit” may well be true.1  Barr does show evidence of correlation.  But she did not present enough evidence to convince us that this was in fact a case of causation, that inerrancy became important primarily because it served as a helpful item in the patriarchal toolkit and not merely that promotion of inerrancy and the solidification of “biblical womanhood” among evangelicals happened to occur around the same time.  We suspect Barr is correct, but we would have liked to have seen more evidence.

Additionally, Barr’s argument regarding inerrancy is built around an insufficiently nuanced doctrine of inerrancy.  One way to think about the doctrine of inerrancy is to make it the foundation of one’s belief system.  This is common among both fundamentalists and evangelicals.  According to this line of thinking, Christians believe in the Bible because it is inerrant.  Since the Bible is inerrant, Christians believe everything it says about Jesus and can trust Him.  Therefore, if inerrancy is undermined, by, for example, questioning Paul’s directives regarding women, all of Christianity comes crashing down.  A better, and we would argue more biblical, approach is to begin with Christ.  We believe in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.  His divine authority then leads us to trust His authorized Scriptures completely.2  In this way, inerrancy flows from belief in Christ, rather than belief in Christ resting precariously on inerrancy.

I think we know someone who recently published the definitive confessional Lutheran dogmatic work on this topic….

Unfortunately, this dismissal of inerrancy as a tool of the patriarchy leaves Barr vulnerable to the argument that she rejects complementarianism because she rejects the authority of Scripture, which would be an unfair characterization of her work.  In an earlier chapter, for example, she invites the reader to reexamine Paul’s writing on women by way of cultural and historical context, whereas someone less committed to the veracity of Scripture might either argue for non-Pauline authorship or blatant rejection of difficult passages.  However, despite her problematic approach to inerrancy, Barr’s broader point that inerrancy has been weaponized against women has validity. Indeed, literalist readings of 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14 are often used a litmus test for biblical faithfulness, whereas other Pauline texts that are not directed specifically at women rarely receive the same sort of rigid application.

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