BETHLEHEM SEMINARY

EGALITARIANISM AND THE SUBMISSION OF THE SON

SUBMITTED TO RICHARD A. SHENK, PHD.IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

THEO 6510: SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 1

2

BYJD HETTEMA

APRIL 2, 2015

CONTENTS

EGALITARIANISM AND THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SON................1

Introduction..................................................1

Establishing the Debated Issue............................1

The Terms of the Debate...................................2

A Recent History of the Debate................................4

Kevin Giles and Egalitarianism in the Immanent Trinity........5

An Assessment and Critique of Giles' Method..................11

Conclusion...................................................15

BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................17

EGALITARIANISM AND THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SON

Introduction

The contemporary battle over women’s roles in the church and home

has been fought on a number of fronts. Among theologians in the

past thirty years, a large amount of ink has been spilled over

whether the Immanent Trinity is egalitarian or complementarian.1

In this introduction, I plan to explain the question surrounding

this debate and also offer a few thoughts on methodology. Then,

in section one, I will give a history of the debate, focusing on

the last thirty years. In section two, I will attempt to set

forth Kevin Giles’ argument in The Trinity and Subordinationism, perhaps

the most well known egalitarian book on the Immanent Trinity. In

section three, I will offer two counter-points to Giles’

position: 1) That he has mistakenly read both Athanasius and

Barth in counting them as allies to his position, and 2) that his

pre-supposition that role-submission leads to ontological

subordination is logically flawed.

Establishing the Debated Issue

1 I am using both of these terms in their majority usage. Certain egalitarians prefer to call themselves “complementarian” and their opponents “hierarchical.” Yet I have chosen these terms to label each side of the debatebecause they are generally acceptable labels to both sides.

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In setting the problem of the debate, it is crucial to

understand what is meant by the terms “Immanent” and “Economic”

Trinity. Both sides agree that these terms are not two separate

“Trinities”, but rather two angles by which the relationship

between Father, Son, and Spirit may be viewed. The Immanent

Trinity is what God is “in Himself.”2 It describes the

relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit before creation ever

happened. The Economic Trinity (from the Greek οἰκονομία,

“responsibility of management”3) describes God as Father, Son,

and Spirit as they relate to creation, and specifically the

incarnation, in their differing roles. The clearest demonstration

of the Economic Trinity is the work of redemption. All sides

agree that the Father sends the Son, the Son accomplishes

redemption, and although not everyone agrees on the precise role

of the Spirit, He is usually said to apply what the Son

accomplished.4 With regards to the Immanent Trinity, most

Egalitarians agree with Giles that the Father, Son, and Spirit

have no authority structure. Most complementarians argue that

within the Immanent Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit share

different roles and authority. For simplicity’s sake, the debate

is usually brought to bear upon the Son’s relationship to the

2 The Reformers preferred the terms ad intra and ad extra to refer to the Immanent Trinity and Economic Trinity respectively.

3 Walter Bauer and Frederick William Danker, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd Edition, 3rd edition. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 697.

4 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe et al., vol. 1, 10 vols., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Pub, 1996), 488.

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Father. The egalitarian position is that the Son is not eternally

submissive to the Father. The complementarian position is that

the Son is eternally submissive to the Father. Both sides often

argue from their position on the Trinity to their respective

stance on women’s roles in the church and home.

The Terms of the Debate

This debate has resulted in a significant amount of crying

“heresy.”5 Other scholars have asked for a moratorium on this

back-and-forth name calling because it clouds the actual issues

of the debate.6 Also, some scholars have suggested that to call

someone a fourth century heretic is, by its very nature,

anachronistic. In fact, it is crucial to point out that the

Nicean-era church was not asking the question of whether the

trinity was composed in such a way as to give direction to

women’s roles in the church. Therefore, we should choose words

carefully when referring to opponents and not assign motives to

their conclusions.

We should also be careful how we frame the debate itself.

Many complementarians call themselves “subordinationist” when it

comes to this particular debate. What they mean is that Jesus is

5 Giles himself claims that complementarians who believe Jesus is eternally submissive to the Father are guilty of being Arians. Several complementarian scholars have fired back that Giles’ position is Modalist and even possibly Nestorian.

6 Fred Sanders, “The Trinity in Gender Debates,” Patheos, Oct 30, 2012, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2012/10/the-trinity-in-gender-debates/. par. 2

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eternally submissive to the Father in his functional role.7 But

the term “subordinationist” is also used of an errant view of the

trinity proposed by Arius and others in the fourth century. What

Arius meant is that Jesus is ontologically inferior to the Father

and therefore a creature rather than Creator-God. Giles makes

much use of this confusion in his books. For instance, Giles uses

the term “subordinationist” to refer to complementarians and

never makes a distinction between their self-claims and the

heresy of Arius. Giles seems to believe that complementarians

make exactly the same error and he uses the confusion for his own

rhetorical purposes.8 This emotional and rhetorical language does

not move the debate forward, but rather clouds it.9 7 One notable exception is John V. Dahms, “The Generation of the Son,”

JETS 32, no. 4 (1989): 493. Dahms goes against most complementarians in arguingthat functional subordination necessarily implies ontological subordination. Giles makes much of Dahm as an example of complementarianism, but this is unfair because Dahms is clearly in the minority opinion.

8 One attempt at setting the terms of the debate is Millard Erickson, Who’s Tampering with the Trinity?: An Assessment of the Subordination Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2009). Erickson uses the terms “gradational” (for complementarians) and “equivalent” (for egalitarians). But it is hard to see why these are an improvement on simply “complementarian” and“egalitarian.”

9 John Starke lists some of the unhelpful ways the complementarian position is labeled: “difference of rank” among the persons; the “superiority of the Father” and “inferiority” of the Son; the Father’s will is “unilaterally imposed”; a “superiority- submission structure”; “hierarchy”; “command structures”; “subordinationism.” According to Starke, language of this sort only clouds the matter and implies that its users either misunderstand the complementarian position or misrepresent it intentionally. This neither furthers the debate nor displays prudence and charity. (John Starke, “Augustine and His Interpreters,” in One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, ed. Bruce A. Ware and John Starke (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 162–63.

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In summary, complementarians argue for an eternal,

functional submission of Jesus to the Father. This submission

does not mean Jesus is ontologically inferior to the Father.

Giles holds that one cannot say that Jesus is eternally,

functionally subordinate (his term) to the Father without making

Jesus ontologically inferior. Therefore, Giles holds that Jesus’

subordination was temporal, lasting only during the incarnation.

Within the immanent Trinity, Giles believes that the Persons of

the Trinity have no authority-submission structure.

A Recent History of the Debate0

In the early 1990’s feminist theologians Elizabeth Shüssler

Fiorenza, Catherine LaCugna, and Jürgen Moltmann, along with some

evangelicals, took up the issue of the eternal submission of the

Son.0 Their expressed goal was to argue for egalitarianism by

eliminating the validity of any claim that there was submission

within the Immanent Trinity. Conservative Evangelicals responded,

primarily arguing on an exegetical basis, but also arguing for

the eternal submission of the Son within the Immanent Trinity.0

Evangelical Feminists fired the next shot, aimed at the perceived

0 Bruce A. Ware and John Starke, eds., One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2015), 14.

0 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-Logyof Liberation, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993); Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us - The Trinity & Christian Life (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996); Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993).

0 John Piper and Wayne Grudem, eds., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood:A Response to Evangelical Feminism (Wheaton, Il: Crossway, 1991).

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Trinitarian errors of their conservative counterparts. In 1997,

Gilbert Bilezikian wrote a scathing article in JETS, questioning

the hermeneutical consistency of the complementarian position.0

In 2002, Kevin Giles wrote The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of

God and the Contemporary Gender Debate.0 This was the first widely-read

book from Evangelical Feminists on the issue. Giles made some

major claims about how complementarians were using the Trinity.

His book ignited a fire-storm of books and journal articles from

both sides of the debate.0 Giles followed with two more books:

Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Re-Invent the Trinity, and The Eternal

Generation of the Son.0 Both sides of the debate see Giles as a

capable and clear writer. Whether one agrees with him or not,

there is no doubt that he has a central place in the debate.

Kevin Giles and Egalitarianism in the Immanent Trinity

0 Gilbert Bilezikian, “Hermeneutical Bungee-Jumping: Subordination in the Trinity,” JETS 40, no. 1 (1997): 57–68.

0 Kevin Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God & the Contemporary Gender Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002).

0 Complementarians included: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2005); Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions, Reprint edition. (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2012); egalitarians included: Millard Erickson, Who’s Tampering with the Trinity?: An Assessment of the Subordination Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2009); Thomas McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010).

0 Kevin N. Giles, Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Zondervan, 2009); Kevin Giles, The Eternal Generation of the Son: Maintaining Orthodoxy in Trinitarian Theology (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2012).

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In this section, I will attempt to set forth Giles’ argument

in a way that I hope he would agree with. Then in the next

section, I will attempt to hold his arguments up to scrutiny to

see if they stand. Kevin Giles argues in The Trinity And

Subordinationism that the argument of complementarians that women

have a role of submission within the church and home is a

twentieth century invention. In the preface of his subsequent

book, Jesus and the Father, he says, “In my [previous] book, … I

sought to give a comprehensive rebuttal of the whole post-1970s’

conservative evangelical case for the permanent subordination of

women.”0 He goes on to state that the complementarian view on the

Trinity, as he sees it, is, “…a doctrine developed late in the

twentieth century to justify and explain the permanent

subordination of women in role and authority to the men set over

them in the church and in the home.”0 In the first third of The

Trinity and Subordinaitonism, Giles attempts to substantiate his claim

that the complementarian view is a “twentieth century doctrine.

In chapter three of The Trinity and Subordinationism, by far the

most important chapter of the book for his argument, Giles gives

a sketch of the fourth century church’s position in relation to

Arianism. He claims that what began as a conception of God the

father as the μοναρχη (“monarch”) in Irenaeus and Tertullian was

modified by Origen to fit into his Neo-Platonic background.0 0 Giles, Jesus and the Father, 9.

0 Ibid., 9–10.

0 This background included a sliding scale of being as one descended from the Father to the Son to the Spirit. For Origen, God the Father alone is

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According to Giles, it was Origen who set the stage for Arius.

Arius and his followers held that the Son was ontologically

subordinate to the Father and therefore “understood to be under

the Father in authority.”0 Arians viewed Jesus as derivative,

having been created by the Father just like the rest of

creation.0 Next, Giles discusses the Cappadocian Fathers’

response to Arian teaching. Giles says, “For [the Cappadocians],

in contrast to Arius, derivation of being did not entail

diminution in being. Their opposition to ontological and

functional subordination cannot be questioned.”0 The Cappadocians

understood Jesus to be eternally begotten of the Father, but they

make it clear that they are not inferring that Jesus is

ontologically inferior.0 Next, Giles moves to Augustine. He says,

“Augustine clearly distinguishes between the eternal “generation”

of the Son and the eternal “procession” of the Spirit and the

temporal “mission” of the Son and the Spirit. For him the temporal

missions of the Son and the Spirit do not have an effect on the

eternal relations they share with the Father in divine unity.

αυτοθεος and the Son was created in time. (Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 61.)

0 Ibid., 63.

0 Ibid., 65.

0 Ibid., 67.

0 It is important to note here that this is the first time “functional subordination” appears in Giles’ chapter. I will show in the next section thatGiles never argues for functional subordination being excluded from the churchfathers. His attempts to show that the church fathers believed that the Persons of the Godhead are equal does not prove his argument.

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[sic]”0 Accoding to Giles, Augustine was arguing that the Economic

Trinity is completely separated from the Immanent Trinity so that

there is no way to make a connection between the two. Thus,

according to Giles, “The temporal missions… do not have an effect

on the eternal relations.” In his second book on the topic, Jesus

and the Father, Giles is remarkably clear: “Augustine likewise gives

no support whatsoever to the idea that Christ is eternally set

under the Father’s authority.”0 If Giles is right, then

complementarians have falsely used Augustine as an ally to their

position.

Next, Giles moves toward the center of the debate in

discussing what he calls “Numerical Subordination.” Giles argues

that what Ante-Nicean Fathers, like Tertullian, meant as a simple

“creedal” ordering of the Father as first, the Son as second,

etc., Origen and others took to mean hierarchical ordering. To

Giles, this creedal-to-hierarchical shift is the same error that

modern evangelicals have made. But he concedes at this point

that, “Ordering in rank, status, and function has nevertheless

been commended or implied from time to time. Thus Pearson

concludes in his Exposition of the Creed that since the Father is

‘first’, he is ‘pre-eminent.’ Many conservative evangelicals

reason the same way.”0 Giles then comments on this reasoning in

an important quote:

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 68.

0 Giles, Jesus and the Father, 190.

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 69.

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It seems that this deduction is made by way of an analogy with fallen human relationships, where the word order usually suggests an ordering in rank, status and function. The one who is first is over others; those who are in lower numerical order are subordinates or inferiors. The word subordinate means to be “ordered under.” In this usage the word order implies hierarchical ordering.0

Giles concedes that such thinking “has been commended or implied

from time to time,” but his conclusion stands that Evangelicals

are thinking wrongly about the Trinity in speaking about the

subordination of the Son. To Giles, the view that Jesus is in any

way submissive to the Father functionally means that Jesus is

inferior to the Father ontologically, which is a Trinitarian heresy.

In the second half of the chapter, Giles attempts to

contrast the church fathers with the “subordinationism” of later

conservative theologians. He begins with Charles Hodge.0 Giles

argues that Hodge holds to ontological subordinationism. He then

quotes Hodge as saying that the subordination of the Son to the

Father is in “the mode of subsistence and operation of the

persons.”0 Giles gives Hodge’s definition of the Trinity as “one

divine being [who] subsists in three persons, Father, Son, and

Holy Spirit. [sic]”0 He concludes Hodge’s position as follows:

0 Ibid., 70. In the next section, I will argue that this is a pre-supposition that Giles himself has brought into this discussion.

0 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1907), 1:445, 461, 464–65, 467–68, 474.

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 72. Quoting Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:445, 461.

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 72.

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“The Father is first not only in his operations or works

(functional superiority) but also in his “subsistence”––

individual existence as the Father (ontological superiority); the Son

is second and the Spirit third. [italics mine]”0 Next, Giles

quotes Louis Berkhof, who seems to hold the same view: “[there

is] a certain subordination as to the manner of personal

subsistence, but no subordination as far as possession of the

divine essence is concerned.”0 Giles claims that Berkhof is

confusing in this quote because Giles himself does not hold that

there can be subordination in the Persons of the Trinity and yet

equality within the divine essence.

Later in the chapter, Giles focuses on two modern-day

complementarians, Stephen Kovac and Peter Shemm, who wrote a 1999

JETS article titled, “A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal

Subordination of the Son.” Giles quotes them as saying that they

hold to a similar view as Berkhof: That within the Godhead there

0 Ibid. Giles’ use of “ontological superiority” in the previous quote isconfusing at best, dubious at worst. I will argue in the next section that this is reflective of a general category confusion that Giles employs in his argumentation throughout the book. For now, it is sufficient to say that holding to Jesus’ subordination to the Father in his subsistence does not make Hodge an ontological subordinationist per se. Giles has more to argue to show that this is the case. Hodge has some other views on the Trinity that readers may choose to dispute such as a belief in the communicated essence of Father to Son. This view was the mainstream reformed position in the 18th and 19th centuries (see Brannon Ellis, Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). However, Hodge’s communicated essenceis a red herring in the present debate.

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 75. Quoting Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth, 1958), 89.

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is “subordination as to the mode of subsistence.”0 Giles follows

this up by saying, “In other words, in ontological relations the

Son is eternally set under the Father. [italics mine]”0 Giles

understands Kovac and Shemm’s “mode of subsistence” to be

referring to Christ’s existence as the eternal Son. Giles then

reasons that Kovac and Shemm are referring to Christ’s ontology in

their speaking of his being subordinate. Therefore, according to

Giles, Kovac and Shemm are ontological subordinationists of the same

nature as Origen and the Arians who followed him. Thus, according

to Giles, complementarian theologians like Kovac and Shemm are

making the same error as the Arians of the fourth century; namely

that of ontological subordination.

Giles furthers his point by quoting conservative theologians

that explicitly use the term “ontological subordination” when

referring to Christ’s submission to the Father. I have already

noted Dahms’ statement that functional subordination necessarily

entails ontological subordination.0 Giles also quotes the 1999

Sydney Doctrine Report on the Trinity as saying the idea that the

Son’s obedience to the Father is “voluntary, temporal and

0 Stephen D. Kovac and Peter R. Schemm Jr., “A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son,” JETS 42, no. 3 (1999): 472.

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 77.

0 See footnote 8 on page 5 of this paper. I will argue in the next section that Dahms and others are in the minority among conservative evangelical scholars. See Robert Letham’s concern over Dahm’s use of “ontological subordination” in Robert Letham, “Eternal Generation in the Church Fathers,” in One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, ed. Bruce A. Ware and John Starke (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 124.

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personal, is both inadequate and untrue.”0 While Giles would

probably agree that very few complementarian theologians argue

for either of these points, he nevertheless includes them in an

attempt to show the link between functional and ontological

subordination.

Next, Giles argues that modern-day complementarians have

invented a doctrine called “eternal role subordination.” He

claims that this type of subordination differs from the earlier

reformed scholars in the following way: “Hodge believed

operational or functional subordination was a consequence of

subordination in subsistence. Today the argument is made that you

can have functional subordination without subordination in being

or subordination in subsistence. [sic]”0 Whether or not this

difference actually exists is something I will attempt to take up

in the next section. By introducing these differences, Giles aims

to sever the link between evangelical complementarians and the

reformed theologians that came before them. Then he expands the

claim by saying “Historic orthodoxy gives no support to any of

these ideas.”0 This is his ultimate goal. It leads him to this

concluding statement: “No one ever spoke of the subordination in

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 79. Quoting the Sydney Doctrine Report, (http://www.gymeaanglican.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Trinity-Doctrine-1999-Synod-report.pdf), par 33.

0 Ibid., 83. This quote is misleading because Hodge meant that the Son’sfunctional submission was a consequence of His eternal relation to the Father,not His ontological inferiority. I will argue for this in the next section.

0 Ibid., 84.

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role of the Son (or of women) prior to the mid 1970s.”0 This

assertion is the main pillar of Giles’ argument that the

complementarian view on the Trinity is an aberration at best and

Arianism re-packaged at worst. Giles concludes the chapter with a

pre-supposition that he states throughout the book: “In regard to

human beings, the permanent and necessary role subordination of one

sex, race or social group implies that they are in some way

inferior in ‘being,’ and this is true on the divine level as

well.”0 If Giles is right, than complementarians have gotten the

Trinity wrong and should abandon their view of women’s roles in

the church and home.

If conservative evangelicals have gotten the Trinity wrong,

then who in the modern era has gotten it right? In chapter four,

Giles turns to Karl Barth as his main ally in arguing for an

egalitarian Trinity. Giles says about Barth, “He reasons that if

Jesus is subordinated to the Father in the incarnation, then this

only occurs ‘in the forecourt of the divine being, with a divine

dispensation (economy) in favor of, and with respect to, the

particular nature of the world, not therefore with the true and

proper and non-worldly being of God.’” Giles continues, “Along

these lines…[Barth argues] that the Son’s subordination seen in

0 Ibid., 83. This is probably a true statement if you limit it to just the word “role.” Giles seems to be right in suggesting that this term came about in the 1970’s. However, it is demonstrably false if you include the concept that the Son is functionally subordinate to the Father. I will try to show this in the next section.

0 Ibid., 85. Giles brings up the 18th and 19th century slave trade often in his book in an attempt to parallel it to the complementarian view toward women.

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the incarnation was entirely temporal, related only to the

economy of salvation.”0 It seems, according to Giles, that Barth

and other theologians like Karl Rahner share Giles’ view that

Jesus’ submission was limited in scope to the incarnation.0 To

Giles, this is proof-positive that modern day conservative

evangelicals have take a wrong turn.0

In summary, Giles has written a scathing book that seeks to

show that conservative evangelicals are not within the bounds of

orthodoxy in the way they argue for an authority structure within

the Immanent Trinity. His brief survey of early church history

has attempted to demonstrate that no early church figures other

than the Arians were arguing that the Son was eternally

submissive to the Father. His overarching critique is that

conservative evangelicals, in their zeal to subordinate women,

have projected onto the Trinity their own views. He says, “The

contemporary conservative evangelical case for the permanent

subordination of women frequently asserts that the Son is eternally0 Ibid., 88.. Quoting Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III/1 (Edinburgh:

T&T Clark, 1975), 196.

0 Giles takes Rahner’s “rule” (that the Economic Trinity is the ImmanentTrinity) to mean that there is no differentiation of the Son from the Father. He says, “For Rahner the subordination of the Son seen in the incarnation doesnot differentiate the Father from the Son.” (Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 29.) Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997),22, 34.

0 Giles also quotes Moltmann, Pannenberg, Lossky, and Zizioulas as modern day allies to his position. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 176.Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 1:308–313. Vladimir Lossky, “The Procession of the Holy Spirit in the Orthodox Triadology,” East. Churches Q. 7 (1948): 45. John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, N.Y: St Vladimirs Seminary Pr, 1997), 40–41.

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subordinated to the Father. This ‘truth’ is taken to be a

rationale for women’s permanent subordination to men…”0 But other

modern theologians such as Karl Barth and Karl Rahner have seen

the truth that there is no warrant either patristically or

exegetically for such a position.

An Assessment and Critique of Giles’ Method

Kevin Giles has clearly set forth what he believes to be

major issues with the complementarian claim that Jesus is

eternally submitted to the Father. Giles’ claims may be summed up

as follows: 1) Any mention of eternal subordination of the Son,

even functional subordination, is guilty of the fourth century

error of ontological subordinationism. 2) The complementarian

position on the functional subordination of the Son is novel and

does not follow orthodox Christianity, as demonstrated by the

lack of any patristic evidence for such a position. This section

will attempt to assess Giles’ methodologies and conclusions,

specifically focusing on how he uses theologians from both the

ancient church and the modern day.

Not surprisingly, there are some very helpful points that

Giles makes in this book. He is right to be concerned that the

Arian heresy of ontological subordinationism may be re-surfacing

today.0 He is also correct in seeing any kind of subordination 0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 23.

0 However, perhaps his time would be better spent going after Jehovah’s Witness theologians and other groups that actually claim that Jesus is ontologically inferior to the Father.

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that argues for Christ as being inferior in his ontology is

guilty of such a heresy. Finally, he is correct in denouncing the

Son’s submission to the Father as forced. Giles has rightly

exposed the more radical wing of complementarianism, and many

complementarians stand with him in this regard.

However, if Giles wishes to argue, as he clearly does, that

the mainstream complementarian position is tending toward heresy,

he is simply wrong. In what follows, I will argue three counter-

points to Giles’ main arguments: 1) Giles has brought his own a

priori pre-supposition into this debate; namely that there is no

such thing as functional subordination without ontological

subordination. 2) Giles misrepresents many of the theologians he

uses to argue for his position.0

First, Giles pre-supposes that the concept of equality among

the Godhead means that there is no possibility of a functional

authority structure. The church fathers were dealing with

Arianism, which argued that the Son was ontologically subordinate to

the Father. Their response to such a heresy was to say that the

Persons of the Trinity are equal. But Giles assumes that if the

Godhead is equal in ontology, it must also be equal in function.

0 Robert Letham has a four-part critique of Giles in John Starke, “Augustine and His Interpreters,” in One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, ed. Bruce A. Ware and John Starke (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 157–74. Letham has grave concerns over 1) Giles’ trajectory hermeneutic, 2) his selectivity over which theologians to include and also which quotes to include from each of them, 3) the fact that his position diminishes the incarnation and the specific role of the Son in it, and 4) Giles calls for mutual subordination to one another without authority structures (“voluntary subordination is godlike”) but then argues that if Christ is eternally submissive to the Father, then he is inferior in being.

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This leads Giles to read all creeds and church fathers who use

the term “equal” as being allies. Thus he feels he can make

sweeping denunciations of the complementarian position. His

reasoning is simply that the early church understood that there

was equality within the Godhead while complementarians do not.

But this is not the case. A number of scholars have done

excellent work showing that many of the creeds and church fathers

did indeed have a place for eternal, functional subordination.0

There is enough of a historical case that the creeds and fathers

have this thinking that the impetus was on Giles to argue for his

position rather than simply state it and assume the historical

church agreed.

Second, not only did Giles assume what should have been the

main question of the debate,0 he also seemed to ignore important

quotes from the theologians of the past that might have gone

against his position.0 For instance, Giles’ conclusion regarding 0 One such example is Michael J. Ovey, “True Sonship––Where Dignity and

Submission Meet,” in One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, ed. Bruce A. Ware and John Starke (Crossway, 2015), 129–56. Another is Starke, “Augustine and His Interpreters.”

0 Namely the question “Do the church fathers have a place for functionalsubordination in their view of the Trinity?”

0 John Starke gives a good overview of Giles’ use of Augustine: “Kevin Giles provides only a spattering of quotes from Augustine that do little to further the debate, since he only employs quotes that argue against the Arian error that the one sending is greater than the one sent in nature, which is why Giles consistently accuses complementarians of tending toward Arian and semi-Arian heresies. Complementarians, of course, want to do nothing of the sort. Like Erickson, Giles suggests that Augustine’s inseparable operation doesn’t allow for an order of submission and authority in the Godhead.” (Starke, “Augustine and His Interpreters,” 160.)

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Augustine is as follows: “Augustine likewise gives no support

whatsoever to the idea that Christ is eternally set under the

Father’s authority.”0 Giles points to Augustine’s discussion of

“sending” in De Trinitate in order to give proof of his position. He

says, “For [Augustine] the termporal missions of the Son and the

Spirit do not have an effect on the eternal relations they share

with the Father in the divine unity.”0 But in Book IV, Chapter 5

of De Trinitate, Augustine says, “Everything that has taken place in

time in ‘originated’ matters which have been produced from the

eternal and reduced back to the eternal… has either been

testimony to this mission or has been the actual mission of the

Son of God.”0 Here Augustine says that the temporal “sending” of

the Son in his Incarnation was “produced” by and can be “reduced

back to” the eternal “sending.” Also, Augustine takes pains to

note several times that it is precisely because the Father is the

Father that he sent the Son. In other words, the Father could not

have been sent by the Son or the Spirit. Jesus is the eternal Son

who was Sent.0 To be sure, these lines do not prove that

Augustine was a functional subordinationist. As I have stated

already, Augustine was not even asking that question. But Giles

0 Giles, Jesus and the Father, 190.

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 68.

0 Saint Augustine and Edmund Hill OP, The Trinity, ed. John E. Rotelle OSA,Second edition. (New City Press, 2012), IV.25.

0 For instance, Augustine says, “[I]t would be quite absurd to talk about [the Father] being sent by the Son he begot or the Holy Spirit who proceeds from Him.” Augustine and OP, The Trinity. IV.32

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should not be so strong in his denunciations in the presence of

these quotes; quotes which Giles failed to include in his book.

Giles’ use of Karl Barth is an even greater example of

selective quoting. I have already included his quote of Barth

supposedly saying that the subordination of the Son was only in

the temporal realm and not in the “true and proper and non-

worldly being of God.”0 In 2004, Mark Baddeley wrote a scathing

article in The Reformed Theological Review called, “The Trinity and

Subordinationism: A Response to Kevin Giles.” In the article, he

says, “The material that [Giles] quotes is actually a position

that Barth is refuting rather than proposing. In context, Barth has

just rejected subordinationism; he then continues:

A second alternative which presents itself is as follows. Wemust certainly accept and take seriously the whole sphere inwhich we have to speak of a divine obedience, in which therefore we have to reckon with an above and a below, a prius and a posterius, a superiority and a subordination in God. We must regard it as a definite sphere of God’s revelation, of His speaking and activity and operation. But we must isolate this whole sphere by stating that in it we have to do only with a kind of forecourt of the divine being, with a divine dispensation (economy) in favour of, and with respect to, the particular nature of the world, nottherefore with the true and proper and non-worldly being of God. There is then a commanding and obeying divine being, but in a true equality, only as worldy forms or appearances of true Godhead, and therefore only in the sphere of the improper being of the Godhead. But that is the weakness of this explanation. For obviously we have to ask what is this worldly, and purely economic, and therefore improper being o f the true God. If His economy o f revelation and salvation is distinguished from His proper being as worldly, does it bring us into touch with God Himself or not? Has He Himself really taken up the

0 See p. 12 of this paper.

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cause of the world or not? Has He really made Himself worldly for the world's sake or not? Obviously, according to this theory, He has not done so. But if He has not, how can there be on this theory any reconciliation of the world with God?

Barth then proceeds to describe a purely economic subordination

as the heresy of modalism and claims that both it and

subordinationism were rejected by the early church.”0 One can see

the quote that Giles pulled from within the larger text.

Unfortunately, he stops quoting two sentences before Barth says,

“But that is the weakness of this explanation…” This scholarship

appears to be poor at best, dubious at worst.0 Unfortunately,

Giles’ selectivity does not end with Augustine and Barth.

According to Robert Letham, Giles has completely misread Charles

Hodge when “he accuses Hodge of teaching that the Trinity is a

hierarchy, the Father communicating the divine essence to the Son

in generating Him.”0 Letham shows that Hodge completely denies

any derivation of essence or that there is a difference of rank

between Father and Son.0 Giles seems to have misunderstood or

misquoted a number of his sources. Other sources he selectively

0 Mark Baddeley, “The Trinity and Subordinationism: A Response to Kevin Giles,” Reform. Theol. Rev. 63, no. 1 (2004): 31–32. Quoting Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 196. [Emphasis is Baddeley’s]

0 Baddeley moves on in his article to show that Giles also gets Karl Rahner completely wrong. Baddeley shows that Giles’ view that Rahner believes any of the members of the Trinity may have become Incarnate is refuted by Rahner himself. (Baddeley, “The Trinity and Subordinationism: A Response to Kevin Giles,” 36. Quoting Rahner, The Trinity, 28–30.)

0 Letham, The Holy Trinity, 492.

0 Ibid. Quoting Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:468–70.

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quoted, leaving out anything that could hurt the argument he was

trying to make.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Giles’ argument is built upon the pre-

supposition that submission entails inferiority of being. He then

reads the theologians of the past through that lens. I have tried

to argue in this paper that he reads many of them falsely. But

Giles’ pre-supposition itself fails on logical grounds. He sees

submission as a necessary element of Christian living. In fact,

he says, “The subordination of the Son in the incarnation reveals

as much about the Father as it does of the Son. It discloses that

the God of the bible is a God who gladly stoops to save.

Voluntary subordination is godlike.”0 But then Giles spends the

rest of the book arguing that the eternal subordination of the

Son makes Him ontologically inferior to the Father. He simply cannot have it

both ways. Either submission is something we all should pursue or

else it makes us inferior. I find it difficult to see how Giles

can refuse a category of glad submission in the Son that does not

make Him an inferior being to the Father.

But what if Giles is right? If so, then I would concede that

the Trinity is egalitarian and complementarians have been guilty

of misconstruing it. However, the exegetical side of the debate

would still need to be fought and egalitarians would still have a

0 Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism, 18.

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lot of answering to do regarding the meaning of certain texts.0

In summary, this debate is but one “battle” in the larger

campaign over the biblical role of women. The debate simply asks,

“What is God like in His interaction within the Immanent

Trinity?” Kevin Giles has taken a stab at guiding it, but at the

end of the day, he has advanced it very little. He has denounced

complementarians as holding to Arian positions, but he has not

been faithful enough in his own scholarship to prove his case.

The implications of this debate for the church and home are

clear. If egalitarians are right on the question of women’s

roles, then the church should look egalitarian. However, this

paper is simply addressing one small part of the debate,

therefore it is not conclusive in its determinations for women’s

roles. However, if the Godhead is complementarian, it seems

logical that the church and home should be ordered in such a way

as to reflect Him.0

0 A few such verses are 1 Cor 11:3, 1 Tim 2:12, Eph 5:22–24, 1 Pet 3:1–6

0 However, even on this point there is some doubt among scholars as to whether we should be finding a guide for human authority structures in the Trinity. Fred Sanders is helpful here. He argues that we should use caution inthis area because we tend to find exactly what we are looking for. He says, “Socialists peer into the Trinity and discern socialism; capitalists capitalism; Catholics see hierarchy; the Orthodox see intercommunion among equals; Baptists see Baptists; egalitarians see only equality, and complementarians see complentarianism. When we use the image-of-the-Trinity strategy, we tend to find what we want to find.” (Sanders, “The Trinity in Gender Debates.” par. 13)

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