Eternal Subordination and Nicene OrthodoxyCurtis W. Freeman, Duke University Divinity School

Symposium on Evangelicals and the Early ChurchWheaton College20-21March 2014

For several decades now evangelical theologians have been

debating what has come to be known as the doctrine of “the

eternal subordination of the Son” (ESS). The case for ESS was

forcefully made by Wayne Grudem in the complementarian manifesto,

Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, in which he argued Christ

was “eternally equal to the Father in deity and essence, but

subordinate to the Father in authority.”1 The subordination of

Christ to the Father, Grudem explained, does not merely name an

economic condition in which the Son during his earthly existence

submitted to the will of the Father. Rather it denotes an eternal

reality that defines the essential nature of the personal

relations of the triune God. In Nicene language the Father is the

unbegotten source of all things, while the Son was “begotten

(gennethēnta) from the Father before all the ages” and is

“consubstantial (homooūsion) with the Father.”2 Grudem suggested

that the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son implies “a

relationship between the Father and the Son that eternally existed and

that will always exist—a relationship that includes a

subordination in role, but not in essence or being.” For “the

orthodox doctrine,” Grudem intoned, “has always been that there

is equality in essence and subordination in role.”3

This social account of the Trinity is not intended simply to

offer a deeper understanding of God, for Grudem argues that it

provides ontological grounding for complementarian gender

relations that reflect the hierarchical pattern in trinitarian

relations. He explains that though women and men as created in

the image of God are equal in personhood and importance, their

differentiated roles are asymmetrical and unequal: for just as

the Son was eternally subordinated to the Father, women are

divinely designed to be subordinated to men, especially in

1 Wayne Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephale (‘Head’): A Resonse to Recent Studies,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton: Crossway, 1991/2006), 540, fn 63.

2 The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, in Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, eds. Creeds and Confession of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 1:162-63.

3 Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephale,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 457. Stephen D. Kovach and Peter R. Schemm similarly contend that “it cannot be legitimately denied that the eternal subordination of the Son isan orthodox doctrine and believed from the history of the early church to the present day,” in “A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 42 no. 3 (1999): 464.

2

marriage. ESS proponents contend that the trinitarian doctrine of

historic orthodoxy holds the Son to be “equal in being” but

“eternally subordinate in role,” thus naming an “eternal

functional hierarchy within the Trinity” which links “God’s

position and authority as God with the concept of masculinity over

femininity.”4 ESS proponents believe that the complementarian and

egalitarian divide is not merely a matter of hermeneutical

difference. They believe that the subordination of women is

ontologically established in the eternal relations of the Trinity

in which the Father rules and the Son obeys.

Had the ESS doctrine remained a disputed matter within the

intramural debate between evangelical complementarians and

egalitarians it most likely would have been an obscure footnote

in the recent revival of trinitarian theology. However, it has

surged in popularity and prominence since the publication in 1994

of Grudem’s Systematic Theology, which is surely one of the most

influential and widely used theology textbooks in the world with 4 Bruce A. Ware, “How Shall We Think about the Trinity?” in God Under Fire:

Modern Theology Reinvents God, ed. Douglas S. Huffman (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 269-77, author’s emphasis. Ware contends that “authority and obedience is rooted in the Trinity and that authority in some special way corresponds to masculinity,“How Shall We Think about the Trinity?” 270. He subsequently published a book on the subject, Father Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2005), see especially 72-85.

3

sales approaching one half million copies and translations

projected soon to be in over a dozen languages. In a limited

sense this emphasis on the Trinity as central to Christian

theology is welcome news given that evangelicals have often been

so focused on Jesus as to appear to affirm a kind of functional

unitarianism of the second person.5 Yet given that Grudem’s

Systematic Theology rehearses his argument on ESS and

complementarianism it ensures a large number of evangelical

students for years to come will be introduced to this doctrine

with the understanding that it is a definitive account of

historic trinitarian orthodoxy.6

ESS and the Nicene Tradition5 The notion of a unitarianism of the second person is mentioned by G.

Ernest Wright, The Old Testament and Theology (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 24;and H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Unity of the Church,” Theology Today 3, no. 3 (1946): 371-84. Evangelicals have been aided inembracing the wider trinitarian renewal by the important introductions StanleyJ. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004); Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, The Trinity (GrandRapids: Eerdmans, 2002); Timothy George, ed. God the Holy Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006); and George, ed. Evangelicals and Nicene Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011).

6 Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 454-60. Grudem declaims that “just as the Father has authority over the Son in the Trinity, so the husband has authority ove the wife in marriage. The husband’s role is parallel to that of God the Father andthe wife’s role is parallel to that of God the Son. Moreover, just as Father and Son are equal in deity and importance and personhood, so the husband and wife are equal in humanity and importance and personhood.” Grudem, Systematic Theology, 257.

4

Proponents of ESS seldom engage early Christian writers to

show that such a hierarchical distinction attaining to the

eternal relations of Father and Son is actually present in Nicene

theology.7 Instead of entering into conversation with the

ecclesial history of interpretation they typically appeal to

their own personal reading of selected biblical texts, like the

phrase “God is the head of Christ” (1 Cor 11:3), which they argue

support their view of eternal subordination in the Trinity. They

maintain that their theological judgments based on these personal

interpretations of the Bible simply restate the doctrines of

historic Christian orthodoxy that the oneness of divine nature is

shared fully, simultaneously, and eternally by each member of the

Trinity. Yet, as Bruce Ware explains, although ESS affirms “an

eternal and immutable equality between the Father and the Son,”

it also posits “an eternal and immutable authority-submission

structure that marks the relationship of the Father and the

Son.”8 And it is precisely this authority-submission structure

that seems to be at odds with the ancient and ecumenical doctrine

of the Trinity. The question that remains, then, is whether ESS

is consistent with Nicene orthodoxy or whether it is a

5

misappropriation (or perhaps a mal-appropriation) of Christian

tradition.

It would be misleading to suggest that the trinitarian

doctrine of God that developed in the fourth century was purely a

matter of extra-biblical philosophical speculation, for the ways

that Christians finally agreed to talk about the relation between

the God of Israel and the Word of God made flesh in Jesus the

Christ emerged as a result of an extended theological

conversation through the interpretation of Christian Scripture.

Because proponents claim that ESS is a “biblical doctrine” shared

by historic orthodoxy it would seem important to enter into a

sympathetic and sustained reading of Scripture with Christian

theologians who were engaged in the evolving formulation of the

Nicene doctrine of God. For example, Cyril of Alexandria

suggested that the notion of the Father’s headship in

1 Corinthians 11:3 entails the eternal generation of the Son,

explaining that the “Father is the head of the Son . . . for the

Father begat the Son very God.”9 Athanasius of Alexandria

similarly argued from the same biblical text that “the Father who

alone is unbegotten and ingenerate, hath generated inconceivably

6

and incomprehensively to all: and that the Son hath been

generated before ages, and in no wise to be ingenerate himself

like the Father, but to have the Father who generated him as his

beginning: for the head of Christ is God.”10 As one reads

Scripture with the ancient Christian commentators it becomes

apparent that the Nicene doctrine of eternal generation, which

delineates the Father’s headship, lays stress on the equality of

Father and Son in that both share the same divine nature.

Moreover, by identifying the Father as the eternal source of all,

including the Word, it preserves the distinction between Father

and Son. Eternal generation was crucial in Nicene exegesis

because it holds together the paired convictions of the

consubstantiality and the distinction of the triune persons.

John Chrysostom pointed out that it was the Arians who

appealed to the notion of God’s headship in 1 Corinthians 11:3 as

warrant for their teaching of the inferiority of the Son. When he

explained that the head is of the same substance as the body, and

so “the Son is of the same substance (homooūsion) as the Father,”

his heretical interlocutors shifted to the subject to

subordination, contending that as the husband governs the wife,

7

so the Father governs Christ. Chrysostom responded that the logic

of their argument depends on similarity of the term “head” in all

clauses of the text. And if so, he explained, “the Son will be as

far removed from the Father as we are from him,” and “the woman

will be as far removed from [men] as [humanity] is from the Word

of God.” Chrysostom then offered a brief word of theological

caution on the use of analogy, which always implies both

similarity and dissimilarity. Had the Apostle Paul meant to speak

of rule and subjection as the Arians claimed, Chrysostom

continued, he would have used the example of a slave and master,

for unlike the slave the wife is “free” and “equal in honor.”

Freedom and equality, however, Chrysostom concluded, attain even

more so divine relations, because though the Son was obedient to

the Father, he was acting as God, “for as the obedience of the

7 Kovach and Schemm are the exception in that they engage pro-Nicene theologians of the fourth century, although they mistakenly connect eternal generation with eternal subordination, “A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son,” 464-70. The ten pages of direct quotes fromthe fathers without commentary or interaction by H. Wayne House hardly count as engaging the tradition, in “The Eternal Relational Subordination of the Sonto the Father in Patristic Thought,” in The New Evangelical Subordinationism? Perspectives on the Equality of God the Father and God the Son, ed. Dennis W. Jowers and H. Wayne House (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 168-78.

8 Bruce Ware, “Equal in Essence, Distinct in Roles: Eternal Functional Authority and Submission Among the Essentially Equal Divine Persons of the Godhead,” in The New Evangelical Subordinationism?, 14.

9 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 11.4, NPNF2 7:68.10 Athanasius, De Synodis, 2.26.2, NPNF2 4:463.

8

Son to the Father is greater than we find in [humans] towards the

authors of their being, so also his liberty is greater.”11

Augustine twice discussed 1 Corinthians 11:3 in his De

Trinitate. The first instance occurs early in the opening book as

part of his account of the consubstantiality of the Father and

the Son, and serves as a tag line in a discussion of the

Philippian hymn in which he laid stress on the equality of Christ

with the Father (Philippians 2:6).12 The second occurrence of the

text is in book six which includes his answer to the question

whether the Father alone should be thought of as the “only true

God” (John 17:3) or whether this title applies to all three

persons of the Trinity.13 Citing this same Scripture, Origen

maintained that the Father only is “very God” (autotheos, God of

himself), but all beyond “the very God,” including the Son who is

“the first-born of all creation,” Origen continued, “is made God

by participation in his divinity.”14 Augustine argued to the

contrary that the designation the “only true God” does not attain

to the Father alone, but properly denotes the Father, Son, and

11 John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians, 26.2-3, NPNF1 12:150.

9

Spirit in trinitarian relation.15 It would seem to follow, then,

that “God” in the phrase “God is the head of Christ” (1 Cor 11:3)

also denotes all three members of the Trinity. But if this is so,

Augustine wondered how the Trinity can be the head of Christ,

since Christ himself is a member of the Trinity. His answer bears

serious reflection: “God” signifies all three persons of the

Trinity in their immanent relations but “Christ” refers to “the

Son alone” in his earthly and incarnate life.16

 Here Augustine demonstrates (as do the other church

fathers) that the Scriptures must be read, not as discrete and

isolated pericopes, each with a single meaning awaiting discovery

simply by unpacking the grammatical and syntactical logic of the

words, but rather as constituting an interrelated set of

spiritual truths within an intratexual narrative including both

testaments that must be explored through multiple senses. Because

Scripture bears witness to the fullness of the truth and reality

of the life of God, the depth of its mystery can never be

hermeneutically exhausted. Moreover, Augustine’s distinction

between the immanent and economic relations in the Trinity is

subtle and significant. It helps to clarify what is too often

10

confused by the proponents of ESS. While it is true that the

immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity are one in the same

God, they are not symmetrical.17 The church fathers were cautious

about applying economic descriptions of Christ in his

incarnation, which include both his humanity and divinity, into

accounts of the immanent relations of the Trinity.18

12 Augustine, De Trinitate, 1.12, NPNF1 3:23.13 Augustine, De Trinitate, 6.10, NPNF1 3:102.14 Origen, Commentarii in Evangelium Joannis, 2.2, ANF 10:21. Origen’s

interpretation reflects the Orthodox emphasis on the Father as the source of life and draws from the Orthodox theology of theosis in which through the Incarnation divinity is united with humanity thus enabling humanity to participate in divinity. E.g., Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 8.54, NPNF2 4: 65;Irenaeus Against Heresies, 5.preface, ANF, 1:526. Citing Christ’s words in John 17:3 that the Father is “the only true God” Origen maintained that the Father alone is God in a strict sense (autotheos) as ingenerate (agēnnetos). The deity of Christ as the Son of God was derivative. He is the “first-begotten of all creation” (Col 1:15), receiving his life and being from the Father, though he was begotten eternally and not created in time (Prov 8:22). Origen’s trinitarian theology ironically became the source of both the Nicene doctrine of eternal generation and the Arian stress on the Father alone as very God resulting in the ontological subordination of the Son. See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1978), 128-30.

15 Augustine here is in agreement with Gregory of Nazianzus, who famously declaimed “when I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For Godhood is neither diffused beyond these . . . nor yet is it bounded by a smaller compass than these.” Oration 38.8, NPNF2 7:347.

16 Sarah Coakley calls attention to the ambiguity of Augustine’s accountof women in which he wavers between their mental equality to men based on Galatians 3:28 (“There is neither male nor female.”) and their bodily subordination to men grounded in 1 Corinithians 11:7 (“Woman is the reflectionof man.”) in God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (New York: Cambridge, 2013), 291-92. Coakley suggests that Augustine draws “the fatal lines of subordination” between gender equality and difference as regards embodiedness when he concluded in De Trinitate 12.7 that the woman alone “is not the image of God,” but the man by himself alone “is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in one,” NPNF1 3:159.

11

The clearest delineation of this principle of partitive

exegesis is made by Gregory of Nazianzus, when he explained,

What is lofty you are to apply to the Godhead, and to that Nature in Himwhich is superior to sufferings and incorporeal; but all that is lowly to the composite condition of Him who for your sakes made himself of no reputation and was Incarnate – yes, for it is no worse thing to say, wasmade Man, and afterwards was also exalted.19

According to this rule some things in Scripture that refer to

Christ pertain to his divine nature, and other things relate to

his human nature.20 Yet it is crucial to understand that both

parts are simply different ways of referring to the same Son of

God. Lofty statements relate to the Son in his divinity (in both

preexistent and incarnate states) while lowly statements refer to

the Son in his composite condition, that is, to Christ’s humanity

in the economy of salvation.21 Speaking of cooperative relations

and mutual submission between the persons of the Godhead, as ESS

17 Karl Rahner observed that “the ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity,” in his The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Continuum, 1974), 22.

18 Though the Council of Chalcedon in 451 settled the doctrinal formula of Christ as having two natures (divine and human) united in one person, the Christological debates continued. The Council of Constantinople in 681 finallysettled the matter that Christ had two wills (divine and human) corresponding to his two natures.

19 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29.18, NPNF2 7:307.20 John Behr, The Nicene Faith: Formation of Christian Theology, Volume 2 (Crestwood,

N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s, 2004), 2:349.21 Christopher A. Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 189-190. Gregory concludes with a lengthy account of alternating ascriptions to Christ’s divinity and humanity, Oration 29.19-20, NPNF2 7:308-09.

12

proponents do, confuses these theological categories and

mistakenly ascribes the human will of Christ’s submission in his

earthly life into the immanent relations of the Trinity. As

Augustine explains, it is important to note that in his earthly

life, Christ as human was subject to the head, namely the Word of

the one eternal and triune God which was made flesh in Jesus the

Christ.22

Some biblical texts, when taken in a straightforward and

apparent sense, seem to suggest a kind of subordination of the

Son, for example, Jesus’ statement that “the Father is greater

than I” (John 14:28). Arian readers, who were inclined more

toward biblical literalism, found support for their view of the

ontological subordination of the Son.23 Whereas Athanasius

explained the Son’s admission that the Father is greater to be an

economic condition of the incarnate Word, the Cappadocians

understood it as a description of the eternal relation between

the Father and the Son. The Father is greater as the cause of the

Son. Yet, as Gregory of Nazianzus argued, though the Father is

the cause of the Son, it does not follow, as Eunomius argued that

22 Augustine, De Trinitate, 6.10, NPNF1 3:102.

13

because the Father is the “cause by nature” that the Father is

“greater by nature.”24 The superiority belongs to the cause,

Gregory continued, but the equality belongs to the nature.25 At

this point the analogy in ESS between the submission of the Son

to the Father and the submission of wives to their husbands

breaks down. Men are not the cause of women, as the Father is the

cause of the Son, and thus the superiority of masculinity over

femininity based on the trinitarian analogy seems to rest on

tenuous theological grounds. Like Chrysostom’s interlocutors, the

proponents of ESS operate with an exuberant notion of analogy

that presupposes too much similarity and too little dissimilarity

in the analogy between husband-wife and Father-Son relations.

Complementarians are already convinced that the role of

women is subordinate to men. It is surely tempting to construe

trinitarian relations to fit their social view, but this would be

a mistake. There are many problems with such theological

approaches that draw parallels between the divine life and human

relations, even from analogies given in Scripture. The most

obvious is a tendency to claim too much. Though human relations

surely image God, the inner life of the triune God is unique and

14

exists under conditions that are disanalogous to human existence

and which always elude the intellectual grasp of theologians,

despite the fact that the minds and hearts of those who think

about the Trinity are drawn to share in the divine life through

their reflections.26 Miroslav Volf cautions that in a strict

sense “there can be no correspondence to the interiority of the

divine persons at a human level.” Unlike the triune persons,

“another human self cannot be internal to my own self as [a]

subject of action,” because “human persons are always external to

one another as subjects.”27 Any appeal to trinitarian doctrine as a

support for social agendas (conservative or liberal) demands to

23 Arianism was based on a “biblical theology.” The early Arians moved from the exegesis of Scripture to the conclusion that Christ, even though preexistent, was a creature. In line with the Antiochene School of his teacherLucian of Antioch, Arius followed a literal interpretation of key christological and trinitarian texts which he took to imply a doctrine of ontological subordinationism. For example, “The Lord created me” (Prov 8:22) and “firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15). Moreover, the early Arians regarded passages from the Gospels (chiefly the Synoptics) and Epistles (viz.,2 Cor 2:9 and Phil 2:5-11) that emphasized the suffering and creaturely existence of Jesus to mean that he could not share equality with God. T. E. Pollard explains that “the Arians fell into error . . . because they were too literal in their interpretation of selected texts isolated from their context and interpreted, not in the light of the whole teaching of the Bible, but in the light of their own extra-biblical presuppositions,” in “The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 41, no. 2 (1959): 417. See Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism—A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 2-4; and Manlio Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church: An Historical Introduction to Patristic Exegesis, trans. John Hughes (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 122-24.

24 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29.15, NPNF2 7:306.25 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 30.7, NPNF2 7:312.

15

be challenged. This cautionary word on drawing parallels between

human and divine relations seems well advised. Human relations do

not imitate divine relations. Human relations can only

participate in the divine life.

ESS and the Eternal Generation of the Son

The claim that ESS is simply a restatement of Nicene

orthodoxy is further complicated by the fact that the theologians

who invented ESS also reject the Nicene doctrine of the eternal

generation of the Son, regarding it to be “highly speculative and

not grounded in biblical teaching.”28 Although the notion that

the Son was eternally generated from the Father is not explicitly

taught in any single biblical text, it emerged as the consensus

fidelium through a sustained reflection on the whole of Scripture

as the story of the God of Israel who became incarnate in Jesus

the Christ.29 The early heresies were not simply driven by

26 Lewis Ayres, “‘As we Are One’: Thinking into the Mystery,” Theology Conference, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (September 20, 2013), 14. https://www.academia.edu/4908427/Trinity_Paper_from_conference_at_Southern_Baptist_Sept_2013

27 Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 210-211. See also Volf, “‘The Trinity Is Our Social Program:’ The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement,” Modern Theology 14 no. 3 (1998): 403-23.

16

misguided philosophical speculation, but were grounded in

profound misreadings of Scripture. For example, when the third

century Monarchians, Noetus and Praxeas, appealed to Jesus’

declaration, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), as warrant

for their view that the Father and the Son are identical,

Hippolytus and Tertullian argued convincingly that the narrative

of the Fourth Gospel identifies the Father and Son as two

distinct persons sharing in the same power and essence.30 And

when in the fourth century, Arius and Eunomius quoted Jesus’

statement that “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28) as

suggesting the ontological inferiority of the Son, Athanasius

showed the superiority of the Father to be consistent with the

Fourth Gospel’s emphasis on the distinction within unity of

Father and Son, and the Cappadocians went further by explaining

that because the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Son

is distinct from and yet equal with the Father.31

Athanasius refuted the Arians by showing “their doctrine is

alien to the divine oracles.”32 He argued that when the

Scriptures identify Christ with the divine names of the God of

Israel like Word, Wisdom, Power, Light, and Life, it shows that

17

the preexistent Christ shares the divine nature, and he

consistently appealed to the Fourth Gospel to affirm the

essential identity of Father and Son without losing sight of the

distinction between them.33 The doctrine of the eternal

generation of the Son that found expression in the Niceno-

Constantinopolitan creed became one of the central principles of

the pro-Nicene theology in the fourth century because it held

together the two fundamental convictions that Jesus Christ is

both consubstantial with and distinct from the Father.34

Moreover, the eternal generation of the Son was formulated

precisely to counter the interpretation of the relationship

between Father and Son in hierarchical terms as claimed by the

Arians, who held that Christ the Son as the offspring of the

Father was subordinate to the Father. The Nicene doctrine of

eternal generation corrected and qualified the Arian employment

of the biblical expression of Christ the Word as “the only Son”

(monogenēs) of the Father (John 1:18), from which they inferred

that Christ as “firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15) was a

creature (Prov 8:22) and subordinate to the Father. As Athanasius

explained, “the Word is from the Father, and the only offspring

18

(gēnnema) proper to him and natural.” But he asked, “For whence

may one conceive the Son to be, who is the Wisdom and the Word,

in whom all things came to be, but from God himself?35 Here

Athanasius saw monogenēs as naming not only the Son’s uniqueness,

30 Hippolytus, Contra Noetus, 7, ANF 5:226; and Tertullian, Contra Praxeas, 22, ANF 3:618.

28 Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 162. Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 27-28; and John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 491. Grudem is vague on eternal generation, suggesting that it “has never been defined very clearly, other than to say that it has to do with the relationship between the Father and the Son, and that in some sense the Father has eternally had a primacy in that relationship,” Systematic Theology, 244. Ironically, some evangelical theologians opposing ESS also reject the Son’s eternal generation. For example, Millard Erickson, contends “that there are noreferences to the Father begetting the Son or the Father (and the Son) sendingthe Spirit that cannot be understood in terms of the temporal role assumed by the second and third persons of the Trinity respectively.” He further states that “to speak of one of the persons as unoriginate and the others as either eternally begotten or proceeding from the Father is to introduce an element ofcausation or origination that must ultimately involve some type of subordination among them,” in God in Three Persons, 309; and Millard J. Erickson, Who’s Tampering with the Trinity?: An Assessment of the Subordination Debate (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2009), 179–84. Keith E. Johnson makes a strong case for eternal generation with specific reference to evangelicals who reject it as “unbiblical,” in “Augustine, Eternal Generation, and Evangelical Trinitarianism,” Trinity Journal, 32 no. 2 (2011): 141-163.

29 Scott Rushing shows how Athanasius deploys John 1:14 as a summary of all Scripture in his “John 1:14 and the Sense of Scripture as a Hermeneutical Principle in Athanasius’s Orationes Contra Arianos I and II,” https://www.academia.edu/6359719/John_1_14_and_the_Sense_of_Scripture_as_a_Hermeneutical_Principle_in_Athanasiuss_Contra_Arianoshttps://www.academia.edu/6359719/John_1_14_and_the_Sense_of_Scripture_as_a_Hermeneutical_Principle_in_Athanasiuss_Contra_Arianos.

31 Athanasius, Orationes Contra Arianos, 3.16, NPNF2 4:403; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 30.7, NPNF2 7:312. For a fuller treatment of the importance of the biblical interpretation (particularly of the Fourth Gospel) in the early trinitarian controversies, see Pollard, Johannine Christology and the Early Church (London: Cambridge, 1970), 3-22; and Pollard, “The Exegesis of John X.

19

but by describing the Son as “in the bosom of the Father” it

suggested that he was eternally begotten of the Father.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that this keystone

principle of Nicene theology was derived from references in

Scripture to the Son as monogenēs with the sense of “only

begotten.”36 Eternal generation gained consensus in emerging

Nicene theology of the fourth century as a kind of hermeneutical

principle that was crucial for holding together the

consubstantiality and the differentiation of the Father and the

Son in the narrative of Scripture. For example, Augustine drew on

this principle when he asked what it means in the Gospel of John

that the Father who “has life in himself . . . has granted the

Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). Augustine began

his answer by emphasizing the dissimilarity between human life,

which is mutable and contingent, and divine life, which is

immutable and has no other source of being. But unlike humanity

or any other creature, the Son has “life in himself” that is the

same as the Father. Yet Father and the Son share the divine life

in different ways. The Father possesses this divine life

30 in the Early Trinitarian Controversies,” New Testament Studies, 3, no. 4 (1957): 334-49.

20

inherently “in himself,” whereas the Son’s possession of divine

life is as the gift of the Father. The life of the Son and the

Father are in one sense identical, but in another sense

different. What can it mean, he asked, that the Father has given

to the Son to have life in himself except that the Son has life

by being begotten of the Father and the Father has life without

being begotten. For he concluded, “Before all time, he is co-

eternal with the Father. For the Father has never been without

the Son; but the Father is eternal, therefore also the Son co-

eternal.”37

By the end of the fourth century the doctrine of the eternal

generation of the Son became hermeneutical shorthand enabling

readers to hold together both the personal distinction and the

ontological union of Father and Son. Contemporary evangelicals

who ignore the patristic tradition of biblical exegesis that led

to the formulation of the eternal generation of the Son and

instead build a theology based on a plain sense reading of the 32 Athanasius, Orationes Contra Arianos, 1.10, NPNF2 4:312.33 Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian

Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 112; and Pollard, Johannine Christology and the Early Church, 184-245.

34 Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford, 2004), 236-40.

35 Athanasius, De Decretis, 5.21, NPNF2 4:164.

21

Bible alone leave themselves and their communities open to new

opportunities for departures from the wisdom of Nicene exegesis.

Without the eternal generation of the Son as a guard and guide

for interpretation, biblical references to the deity of Christ

are too easily collapsed into new forms of Monarchianism in which

the distinction of Father and Son is not retained. And without

the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son as a

hermeneutical lens, scriptural descriptions of the personhood of

Christ are easily rendered into yet another iteration of Arianism

in which the full deity of Christ is lost.

But the refusal to engage the exegetical tradition of Nicene

theology in a sustained fashion suggests a deeper hermeneutical

issue at the heart of ESS shared more widely with other

evangelicals. Namely, it is formulated on the basis of a kind of

biblicism that confuses sola scriptura with nuda scriptura in which, as

36 John 1:14 describes the Word incarnate as the “only son from the Father” (monogenēs parā patrōs). The King James Version mistranslated monogenēs as “only begotten.” The etymological derivation of monogenēs, however, is gēnes, not gennāo, and thus its meaning is “one and only,” or “unique,” but not“only begotten.” A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., ed. William Arndt and revised Frederick William Danker (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. monogenēs, 658.

37 Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 19.13, NPNF1 7:127-28. I am indebted to Keith Johnson who pointed me to Augustine’s exegesis of John 5:26,“Augustine, Eternal Generation, and Evangelical Trinitarianism,” 147-48.

22

Kevin Vanhoozer has noted, “each biblical interpreter sees what

is right in his or her own eyes.”38 This appeal to a private

interpretation of the Bible without engaging the historic

Christian tradition is strikingly reminiscent of the Arian appeal

to a selectively literalistic and private sense of Scripture.39

One lesson from reading the Scriptures with the fathers is that

although Scripture is sufficient in supplying the basis for a

Christian understanding of God, theological reflection limited

only to the words of Scripture is insufficient and will leave

important questions unresolved.40 As Nicene exegesis

demonstrates, hermeneutics for early Christians entailed more

than a matter of applying simple rules of grammar and syntax to

acquire a fixed and set meaning. To grasp the sense of Scripture

required more than attending to the words of a single text. It

demanded apprehending the scope (skopos) of the biblical message

which was summarized in the rule of faith.41 And to apprehend

this scope necessitated approaching the Scriptures with openness

to more than the literal sense, which followed the hermeneutical

trajectory of the New Testament writers themselves.42

23

Through this hermeneutical strategy Nicene Christians

learned to understand the whole Bible as of the story of the

triune God. It demanded listening to the words of Scripture both

as a deposit of apostolic memory of the Word made flesh in Jesus

Christ, and as participation in the community of living memory of

the crucified and risen Lord who by the Spirit continued to be

known in and through Word and sacrament. By ignoring the

interrelation between canon and creed the proponents of ESS

expose their mistaken assumption that the consensus fidelium of

orthodoxy was arrived at by individual interpreters appealing to

the Bible alone in isolation from its ecclesial context. Because

the canon of Scripture and the creeds of the church developed

together, neither can be properly grasped without reference to

the other.43 They are co-inherent. The rule of faith enabled the

early church to conceive of the two Testaments as one canon, and

the creeds summarized the trinitarian pattern of Christian

Scripture.44 The ancient ecumenical creeds are, to borrow a

phrase from Yves Congar, “monuments of tradition” that bear

witness to how Christians in earlier times read the Scriptures,

24

and thus invite contemporary believers to read them in

participation with the living tradition of the church.45

Just as Arianism was a theology built on a certain kind of

biblical literalism severed from the tradition, it is not

38 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 154. Vanhoozer playfully describes this mistake as “solo scritura.” Timothy George similarly critiques the mistake of thinking that sola scriptura means nuda scriptura or scriptura solitaria, in “An Evangelical Reflection on Scripture and Tradition,” Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, 9, no. 2 (2000): 206. Proponents of ESS arenot alone in this biblicism. Evangelical theologian Gilbert Bilezikan charged proponents of ESS with violating the Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, but hemakes his case on the grounds of the same hermeneutical biblicism as his opponents, in “Hermeneutical Bungee-Jumping: Subordination in the Godhead,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 40, no. 1 (1997):57-68.

39 Athanasius, Orationes Contra Arianos, 1.37, NPNF2 4:327.40 R. P. C. Hanson has shown the importance of the interpretation of

Scripture in the determination of Nicene orthodoxy in The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 824-49.

41 Athanasius stated that “the scope and character of Holy Scripture” isthat Christ “was ever God, and is the Son, being the Father’s Word and Radiance and Wisdom; and that afterwards for us he took flesh of a Virgin, Mary Bearer of God, and was made man,” Orationes Contra Arianos, 3.29, NPNF2 4:409. The scope of Scripture is summarized in the regula fidei, which he described as the “tradition, teaching, and faith of the catholic church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the fathers kept.” For Athanasius the rule was a summary of Christ’s teaching and the Apostles’ preaching which from very early times was used in the instruction ofcatechumens and based on the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19. As a foundational summary of the church’s faith and teaching, the rule of faith also served as a regulative principle (kānon) for the interpretation of Scripture. Athanasius, Ad Serapium, 1.28, in The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning theHoly Spirit, trans. C. R. B. Shapland (London: Epworth Press, 1951), 133-36. See Pollard, “The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy,” 418-425; Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed., 40; and D. H. Williams, Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005),93. For a description of how to think about applying the rule of faith in contemporary hermeneutics, see Prosper S. Grech, “The ‘Regula fidei’ as Hermeneutical Principle Yesterday and Today,” The Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Jože Krašovec (Sheffield, Eng.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 589-604;

25

surprising that by following a path of hermeneutical biblicism

the proponents of ESS have reached conclusions that are at odds

with Nicene orthodoxy. Indeed, it seems that when biblicism

operates free from the received wisdom of the church’s historic

tradition there is a propensity to result in some form of

unitarianism. The history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

nonconformity is replete with examples from Faustus Socinus to

John Biddle to Matthew Caffyn of literalistic biblicism leading

to rejections of the Trinity.46 To put it simply, without the arc

of the Christian story outlined in the ancient ecumenical creeds

as a hermeneutical guide, it is doubtful that an understanding

Scripture as the unfolding narrative of the triune God can be

sustained for long.

Nathan MacDonald, “Israel and the Old Testament Story in Irenaeus’s Presentation of the Rule of Faith,” Journal of Theological Interpretation, 3, no. 2 (2009): 281-298; Leonard G. Finn, “Reflections on the Rule of Faith,” in The Bible as Christian Scripture: The Work of Brevard S. Childs, ed. Christopher R. Seitz, Kent H.Richards, and others (Atlanta: SBL, 2013), 221-42; Seitz, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 191-203.

42 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2 vols., trans. Mark Sebanc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 2:1-39; Karlfried Froehlich, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 1-29; and David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” in Memory and Mission: Theological Reflections on the Christian Past (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988), 143-63.

26

ESS and the Divine Will

This deviation from Nicene orthodoxy in ESS is even more

pronounced when its defenders infer from the supposed notions of

the Son’s eternal submission and obedience to the Father that the

Son has a will separate and distinct from the Father. By

ascribing a division of wills into the Godhead, ESS stands in

direct contradiction with the most basic conviction of patristic

thought that “discerned in God only one will and one ‘energy’

(principle of action).”47 This line of thinking not only posited

a single will within the Godhead rather than multiple wills

according to each person, but also for a unified sense of divine

action arising from the oneness of energy. Gregory of Nazianzus

argued from this conviction that

There is One God, for the Godhead is One, and all that proceedeth from him is referred to One, though we believe inThree Persons. For one is not more and another less God; nor43 Robert W. Jenson, Canon and Creed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox,

2010), 11-18.44 Jenson, Canon and Creed, 27-50.45 Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,

1964/2004), 129-55.46 Curtis W. Freeman, Contesting Catholicity: Theology for Other Baptists (Waco, Tex.:

Baylor University Press, 2014), chapter 4; and Paul C. H. Lim, Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 16-68; and H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 1-24 and 163-217.

47 George Leonard Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1956), 256.

27

is One before and another after; nor are They divided in will or parted in power; . . . but the Godhead is, to speak concisely, undivided in separate Persons.48

Gregory of Nyssa similarly observed that to affirm that both the

Father and the Son are God means there is “no difference either

of nature or of operation” in the Godhead. And because the divine

nature is apprehended by every conception as undivided, he

concludes, “we properly declare the Godhead to be one, and God to

be one, and employ in the singular all other names which express

Divine attributes.”49 Proponents of ESS seem to believe that by

arguing that in the Trinity there are three persons with three

separate and distinct wills, they are simply proposing an

evangelical version of social trinitarianism. They are instead

introducing a form of the tritheism that Nicene orthodoxy long

ago laid to rest.

ESS deviates from Nicene orthodoxy on the basis of its

simple biblicist hermeneutic, but what makes this hermeneutic

intelligible in the first place is an individualistic

understanding of personhood that is then ascribed to the

relations between members of the Godhead. The most important and

48 Gregory of Nazianzus, The Fifth Theological Oration, 14, NPNF2, 7:322.49 Gregory of Nyssa, On ‘Not Three Gods,’ Letter to Ablabius, NPNF2, 5:336.

28

lasting contribution of the Cappadocian theology may have been

the identification of hypostasis, a term which already was

understood as conveying the being (ousia) of God, with person

(prosopon). Cappadocian theology was based on the belief that the

being of the one God is present in each person of the Godhead,

which exists, not as three discrete individuals, but as persons

in communion.50 With respect to the underlying psychology of

Gregory of Nyssa, “the attribution of a capacity to will is not

derived from existence as individual(s), or from the existence of

individuals in relation,” but rather that the cause of the

existence of the will “is wholly unrelated to the reality of

individual existence.”51 However, when Gregory applies

psychological language to the Trinity it is typically with

reference to the Godhead as one person. And when Gregory does

50 John Zizioulas, Being As Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 36-41. For a critique of Zizioulas see Lucian Turcescu, “‘Person’ Versus ‘Individual,’ and Other ModernMisreadings of Gregory of Nyssa,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 527-39, especially 536-37. Turcescu criticizes Zizioulas for using the Cappadocian trinitarian theology to combat modern individualism. He argues that “the Cappadocian Fathers were not aware of the dangers of individualism and perhapsthat is why they did not make many efforts to distinguish between person and individual.” However, Turcescu in no way suggests that modern individualism should be read back into the Cappadocian theology of the Trinity.

51 Michel René Barnes, “Divine Unity and the Divided Self: Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology in its Psychological Context,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 482. The entire issue, edited by Sarah Coakley, is devoted to Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa.

29

occasionally apply psychological language to the three divine

persons, there is no indication that their interaction is

analogous to the interaction between three distinct human agents,

but rather as one principle of action.52 The basic premise of ESS

that the Father rules and the Son obeys presupposes an account of

personhood which is individualistic so the will of each divine

person is taken to mean that there are three individual wills and

that the three divine persons act as three distinct agents. This

is not the trinitarian theology of Nicene orthodoxy.

The fact that the ESS is largely untested by the wider

ecumenical and academic audience is reason enough to forestall

its acceptance as a legitimate reading of Nicene theology, but

the initial evaluations are not promising. It is clear enough

that ESS is not simply a restatement of the historic Nicene

doctrine, but rather a very new doctrine based on a very modern

interpretation of the Bible and correlating with very established

social agenda. It is not part of the received wisdom of the

Christian tradition. It is a proposal of contemporary speculation

52 Lewis Ayres, “On Not Three People: The Fundamental Themes of Gregory of Nyssa’s Theology as Seen in To Ablabius: On Not Three Gods,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 447.

30

that has yet to be approved by any except a very small and

unrepresentative group of evangelical theologians. One of the

major concerns about ESS is the distinction between functional

and ontological subordination. While it is true that the

incarnate Son in his earthly life was submissive to the Father,

the suggestion that this subordination extends to his eternal

exalted state suggests deep confusion about the immanent and

economic relations of the Trinity.53 Some critics have gone so

far as to argue that ESS is simply a new version of Arianism.54

It would not be the first time that a new doctrine was simply

another form of an old heresy. The verdict is still out, but the

53 Grudem argues that the Son and Spirit are “subordinate in their roles,” and that “these differences in role are not temporary but will last forever,” Grudem, Systematic Theology, 249. The notion that the relational patternspresent in the economy of salvation reflect the eternal and immanent relationsof the Trinity is profoundly mistaken. Karl Rahner famously observed that “the‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the‘economic’ Trinity,” in The Trinity, 22. However, theological language about the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity functions differently. Human relationships per se cannot imitate the immanent Trinity, although they can participate in the relations of the divine persons. To speak of cooperative relations and mutual submission among the persons of the Godhead, as ESS proponents and opponents do, seems to be a confusion of these theological categories.

54 Kevin Giles, Jesus and The Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 17-54; and Giles, The Trinity & Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God & the Contemporary Gender Debate (Downers Grove, Ill.:InterVarsity, 2002), 76-85. See also Bilezikan, “Hermeneutical Bungee-Jumping:Subordination in the Godhead;” and Phillip Cary, “The New Subordinationism: Reading Inequality Into the Trinity,” in Jowers and House, The New Evangelical Subordinationism?, 1-12.

31

indications suggest that ESS is not consistent with the historic

and ecumenical consensus of the received tradition, and until

otherwise demonstrated it should be regarded as an unproven

supposition.55

The path for evangelicals seeking to retrieve the historic

trinitarian faith lies in a deep and sustained engagement with

the first five centuries of Christianity.56 This retrieval is

complicated by the fact that though evangelicals typically read

the Bible through a hermeneutical lens inherited from orthodoxy,

they also regard as unnecessary the post-apostolic tradition in

which these orthodox doctrines were worked out. One way of

correcting this lack of historical consciousness is by

emphasizing that the resurgence of trinitarian theology in the

twentieth century with its emphasis on the social relations of

55 For a balanced assessment of this issue of Nicene orthodoxy and ESS, see Keith E. Johnson, “Trinitarian Agency and the Eternal Subordination of theSon: An Augustinian Perspective,” in The New Evangelical Subordinationism?, 108-32. Agroup of evangelical theologians, including Aída Besançon Spencer, Mimi Haddad, Royce Gruenler, Kevin Giles, I. Howard Marshall, Alan Myatt, Millard Erickson, Steven Tracy, Alvera Mickelsen, Stanley Gundry, and Catherine Clark Kroeger have issued a document which warns that ESS ends up in tritheism, in “An Evangelical Statement on the Trinity,” accessed December 3, 2011, http://www.trinitystatement.com/wp-content/files/Trinity%20Statement%20Spencer.pdf.

56 D. H. Williams Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999); Williams, The Free Church and the Early Church: Bridging the Historical and Theological Divide (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

32

the three divine persons has its roots in both the biblical

narrative and patristic reflections.57 Will evangelicals listen

to the voices of ressourcement that reconnect them with the

trinitarian faith and practice of the historic church, or will

they pursue a way forward based on novel and eccentric

interpretations of the Bible? The time has come to decide.

57 Stephen R. Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2011).

33