Transcript

The Eternal Subordination of the Sun.

This is a controversy that has gotten pretty heated in the last few years.

It's really had a lot of publications dealing with articles as well as full-length books addressing this issue.

So I'm going to explain what exactly this issue is and give a brief explanation and reason why I have a problem with the idea of eternal subordination.

This isn't a controversy that I have followed really extensively.

It is one I have followed to some extent, but I'm by no means an expert in this area.

I haven't done all of the readings and all of the controversies, but I have a decent handle on at least what some of the basic issues are and exactly what's at stake here.

There are basically two figures, at least that I'm familiar with, who have defended this notion of the eternal subordination of the sun.

So it's referred to both as ESS, eternal subordination of the sun, but also eternal functional subordination.

So I've heard it referred to as EFS as well.

So I'll explain what that is.

But two major figures who have promoted this idea would be Wayne Grudem, who is, you know, he's kind of the standard evangelical systematic theology, Calvinist-ish leaning, but he's also a little bit charismatic, kind of Baptist in some of his influences.

So he has promoted this idea specifically in some of his writings on women in ministry and on gender, where he's defending traditional gender roles and defending the notion that ministry, the office of word and sacrament ministry, not that he would use that language, is specifically something that God calls men to, not women, and that there are gender differences there.

So the other name is Bruce Ware, who's written a popular level book on the Trinity, which largely was a good book other than these issues that came up in it.

So he's a Southern Baptist professor, theologian, four-point Calvinist, so kind of in that evangelical Calvinist-ish leaning field.

So both of these figures defended this notion of eternal generation specifically in the context of speaking about roles or relationships in marriage.

So the argument goes like this, that within marriage, there is a distinction between the role of the husband and the role of the wife.

And the role of the husband is one of headship, and the role of the wife or the woman in the relationship is one of submission.

And so in this relationship, the question that a lot of people would ask today who are fighting against what they call the patriarchy and any kind of system where someone is the head of someone else because of gender or something like that, they argue that this makes women less than men.

And so the distinction, the reason why this whole conversation came up, is to say that there is an eternal differentiation between the Father and the Son in the triune Godhead.

And so in this eternal differentiation, there is a submission of the Son to the Father.

And so this subordination or the submission is something that is eternal.

It's not just because of the incarnation, this is something that just is in the very nature of things.

And the argument is, well, the Father and the Son are both equally God, so ontologically they're the same being.

One is not greater than another, but even within that system, there is submission.

So this is a way to argue to say that you can have one party submitting to another without saying the one who submits is somehow ontologically less than the one who was being submitted to.

And so they'd say this is kind of the structure within God himself, the structure of the Trinity, and then this is mirrored in marriage relationships.

So that's the kind of the foundational point that's being made in a lot of these discussions.

And I think just generally within broader evangelicalism, there is a very weak understanding of the doctrine of God as a whole.

And this is something that's been addressed a lot more recently with new publications on things like immutability and divine simplicity.

There's been a move back toward a more classical theistic understanding, a more classical understanding of who God is in a Trinitarian sense, as well as just in terms of the attributes of God.

So with a lot of those discussions, what people have begun to discover is that some of the ways that we've spoken about God within the church today really don't line up with where the church fathers were at and with historically just how Christians have spoken about various things.

Now, I'm guilty of this as well.

I read some of the works that are cited in this controversy.

I've read Bruce Ware.

I read Wayne Gruden when I first started studying theology.

And so even in my own thoughts, in my own writing, some of these ideas kind of came across in the past until I really started studying this issue and looking into it.

And when doing that, I began to realize that, wait a minute, this actually is a problematic position and this isn't just historic Trinitarianism.

So what is the problem with this view?

And by the way, this view does come up within Lutheranism as well.

Someone pointed me on Twitter to an article by John Kleinig where he makes an argument very similarly in dealing with the issue of women's ordination.

And I love John Kleinig.

I think he's a wonderful writer and theologian.

And I was surprised to find this kind of thing within his writing.

And I don't know if he still holds this position, but this is certainly something that came out in the past.

I would assume there was probably an influence from Gruden there, but I'm not sure.

So I don't know where he's at exactly that today.

But just to say that this has been something that has impacted the church broadly in all sorts of different traditions.

So evangelical, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, all different circles.

I'm not sure about Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Generally, they have a much better handle on their historic doctrine of God than we Protestants do, honestly.

Unfortunately, that does tend to be the case.

So when I do point people to authors who are writing on the doctrine of God, I usually do point them to Roman Catholic authors because they do tend to be the best.

Now, I think that's shifting in that there is a move back toward classical theism within Protestantism, broadly speaking.

But generally, Roman Catholic authors are the best on some of these issues.

So I don't think that it's been an issue there.

If it has been somehow, please point me to it.

I would be really interested to see that.

But so what's the major issue?

Why does this matter?

Now, on the one hand, those who promote this idea are not saying that the Son is ontologically subordinate to the Father.

The Son is not less than the Father.

So they are equal in worth and dignity and value in worship and all of those things.

But there is a submission of the will of the Son to the will of the Father.

Now, we do see that played out in the New Testament several times.

We have the Son submitting to the Father.

But the question is, when does this occur?

Is this something that is eternal or is this something that is temporal?

And is it simply a part of the reality of the Incarnation?

Because we know that there is a difference in terms of Christ functioning as Son to the Father in this incarnate state than there is in the eternal relationship of Father and Son.

Not to say that there is a divorce between the two so that, you know, somehow the eternal relationship is breached.

No, that continues as it is.

But because the Son is assumed to human nature, there are things that are going to be different that we see played out throughout the life of Jesus.

And one of those is that there is this necessity of the Son to submit his will to that of the Father.

But in historic Christology, that's been defined as orthodox Christology, the position in terms of Christ's will has been called diothelitism, to say that there are two wills in Christ.

And the reason for this is to say that in terms of his divine nature, there is one singular divine will.

So, there is no division between the will of the Father and the will of the Son and the will of the Spirit.

So, will is connected to essence, not person.

Okay, so the unity of essence includes a unity of will between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now, because Christ is incarnate, he's assumed a complete human nature, he has all aspects of what makes a human human, and one of those is that he has then a human will.

So, there's a distinction between his human will and the divine will.

And so, those aspects of submission have to do with the human will of Christ, not to say that there is a distinct will of the Son from the Father.

Because what you have, if you're positing that there are three distinct wills, there is not one divine will, there are three divine wills, you end up with basically three distinct divine essences.

You end up with something like a tritheism, a kind of polytheism, where there is a distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit.

You have these three distinct beings with their own unique wills, and then the thing that aligns them together is some kind of social relationship or something like that.

So, generally, it's been taught that will is an aspect of essence rather than person.

And so, to distinguish between persons, what we're distinguishing between Father, Son, and Spirit, when we say that they are distinct, we are not saying that they're distinct persons in the sense that we think of human persons, like we each have our own will, but maybe we're united in a kind of general vision or something like that, and we're all humans, but we have distinct personalities and distinct wills and things like that.

This is not the case with the Godhead.

What distinguishes the Father from the Son and the Spirit is that from the Father comes the acts of begetting and procession.

The Son is the one who is begotten, and the Spirit is the one who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Those are the ways that we distinguish the Father, Son, and Spirit, and we distinguish them in those ways because these are the terms that Scripture uses to distinguish Father from Son from Spirit.

We're told that Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father, so that the Father is begotten of none.

He proceeds from none.

We're told that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.

He's also sent from the Son or through the Son, as some have expressed it.

So, we have to distinguish between the persons of the Godhead in the way that Scripture does, and the way that Scripture does it is not by saying that there are three divine wills that are each distinct, and the persons have to align their wills with the Father who has the ultimate will, but instead through these acts of procession or spiration and then generation.

So, that's my brief comments.

I do think this ends up being problematic in terms of reduction of God, things like divine simplicity.

It divides the persons.

Do I think that it's heresy?

This is a term that's been thrown around a lot.

I'm not sure that I would refer to it as heresy.

I think it has some problematic implications, but because those who are defining these issues, who hold to this position, because they are still acknowledging that God is one in essence, that there is an ontological equality between Father, Son, and Spirit, and that there is a distinction between persons, I don't think we can call it heresy, but I think that it certainly can lead to what would be tritheism, and tritheism would be a heretical position to hold.

So, those are my comments.

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