Introduction

The Trinity is an essential doctrine where the protestant Church either stands or falls. As such, there have been many attempts to define the distinction between the Persons of the Trinity. This paper will discuss three such distinctions: Arian subordinationism and eternal functional subordinationism (EFS) against the historic Reformed distinction of the Trinity. It will be shown that both Arian subordinationism and EFS deny the historic Christian definition of homoousios and result in a distinction in the Trinity that is contrary to Scripture. 

Definitions

There are two main distinctions within the beliefs of eternal subordinationism which this paper will refer to as subordinationism and eternal functional subordinationism. Kovach and Schemm Jr. refer to these as emphatic and economic subordinationism. Subordinationism, which is sometimes called emphatic subordination, came out of the Arian controversy in the early church. In this view, there is an emphasis on the “inequality of nature and being”¹ among the Persons of the Trinity. This was condemned as heresy at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD since it entails the subordination or inferiority of essence. This means that Arius taught that the Son’s very essence is lesser than that of the Father’s essence. This launches the doctrine of God out of Nicene orthodoxy which states that the Father and Son are homoousios, or of the same essence.

Eternal functional subordination endeavors to reconcile the idea of subordination with Nicaea, attempting to bring ideas of subordinationism into orthodoxy. In simple terms, advocates of EFS will claim that Nicaea says that Jesus is of the “same divine dignity, but in an order of subordination” claiming that the “Father is primary and Sonship secondary” but not in terms of essence.² In this way, EFS attempts to maintain an idea of subordination while agreeing with the Reformed view and Nicaea in saying that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all homoousios. This means that advocates of EFS agree that all Persons of the Trinity equally share in the same divine essence. Their belief in the Trinity’s one essence is enough to get their belief out of heresy, but will still be proven to not align with biblical and historical Christianity. 

Arguments in Favor

After giving preliminary definitions of the two main variations of subordination, it is now time to see how these two positions argue their views before defending the orthodox Reformed view.

An Argument for Subordinationism

As mentioned above, subordinationism finds its roots in the Arian controversy in the early fourth century. Arians argue that the Son being begotten of the Father implies a superiority of the Father. If the Son is from Someone, that Someone must be greater than He.³ They argue for an ontological submission, with the Son and Spirit’s essence being inferior to that of the Father’s essence. For Arians who argue subordinationism, the Father, Son, and Spirit have a natural inequality between their natures.⁴ Although they believe the Son has a lesser ontological nature than the Father, they still count Him divine. Bray explains this by saying:

If there is only one eternal, uncreated, and unbegotten God, and that God is the Father, then the Son cannot be God in the same sense or to the same degree as the Father is. The Arians argued, however, that the Son could still be “divine,” sharing many of the attributes of the Father and having special authority to act as the Father’s agent in the work of salvation, without being “God-in-himself ” (autotheos).⁵

In this way, Arians attempt to construct their ideas of subordination in the divine natures, while maintaining that the Son retains at least some sort of divinity.

Arguments for Eternal Functional Subordinationism

It must be mentioned again that eternal functional subordination desires to distance itself from Arianism. As such, advocates of EFS do not agree that the Son or the Spirit are of any lesser essence than that of the Father. They claim to reject the idea of ontological subordination of the Arians and argue for economic subordination instead. They say that “while all three divine Persons are identical in essence, the Son is economically subordinate to the Father with respect to his eternal mission and function. The Son is no less than the Father, but has voluntarily submitted himself to the will of the Father.”⁶ This is the key distinguishing factor: the Son voluntarily and eternally submits His will to the Father’s will. It’s not so much part of the Son’s nature to do this but is part of His will or how He decides to work. 

This, they see as the historic way of distinguishing between the Persons of the Trinity, even claiming that it is what is taught at the Council of Nicaea: the Son is “God from God” and “Light from Light”. For EFS, this language of “fromness” brings flavors of dependence of the Son unto the Father. In addition to early Christianity, they also see this in Reformers like John Calvin when he says, “In respect of order and gradation, the beginning of divinity is in the Father.”⁷ They see this as a clear indication that since Calvin believed that the beginning of divinity is in the Father, he must have also believed that the Son and Spirit were subordinate to Him.

Lastly, EFS also sees economic subordination as the definitive Scriptural argument. Pointing first to Galatians 4:4, one sees that the Son was eternally the Son before His incarnation in His mother’s womb and thus as the eternal Son, eternally in submission to His Father.⁸ They also see three functions the Son works with the Father while retaining a subordinate role to His Father: creation, redemption, and the restoration of that creation. EFS also compares John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16 when speaking of the Son and Father creating all things. The former says that all things were created through the Son, while the latter states they were created by the Father. This points to a difference in the function that each had in the role of creation, showing advocates of EFS that the Son and Father are “united in being, but ranked in function.”⁹ They additionally see in John 3:16 that the Son was sent by the Father to accomplish redemption for His people. This sending of the Son by the Father shows that the Father has a higher level of authority than the Son. Thus, the Son obeys when His Father sends Him. 

Strangely enough, one more Scriptural argument made by many advocates like Wayne Grudem is that the “hierarchical ordering of the sexes on earth” as presented in the Bible “is predicated on the hierarchical ordering of the divine three persons in eternity.”¹⁰ The brunt of Grudem’s argument comes from 1 Corinthians 11:3 wherein Paul says, “I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God,” (1 Cor. 11:3 ESV). Here, Grudem sees that “The Father has greater authority. He has a leadership role among all the members of the Trinity that the Son and the Spirit do not have”¹¹ as the man has greater authority over his wife or as a human father has over his son.¹² Consequently, Grudem believes that if one does not hold to this view, they become liberal who have rejected the teaching of Scripture and historic orthodoxy.¹³

Arguments Against

Now that the arguments in favor of subordination and eternal functional subordination have been given, it is time to give a response from the historic Reformed view. 

Against Subordinationism

Like in the last section, subordinationism will be treated here sparingly as it has been widely considered to be heretical since the early church, even within the circles of EFS. The Bible and historic creeds are clear that the Son was not created and this has always been. The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, specifically refuting Arianism, said that Jesus was “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,” making it clear that historic orthodox Christianity never regarded Jesus as subordinate by reason of Him being a creature.

Scripture also makes it clear that Jesus is not created, but is of one substance with the Father. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1) with the Word being later connected to the Son in verse fourteen. Paul says that by Jesus, “all things were created, in heaven and on earth…all things were created through him and for him,” (Col. 1:16). Jesus could not have created Himself. Finally, though not the extent of Scriptural proof, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “the Father is in me and I am in the Father,” (John 10:38) showing that Jesus taught that He and the Father were of truly one essence. In this way, any notion of the Son being created or subordinate to the Father ontologically should be quickly dismissed as against the teachings of Scripture and thus heretical.

Against Eternal Functional Subordinationism

It is first helpful to define what the historic Reformed view is regarding the distinction of the persons of the Trinity. The Reformed view distinguishes between the Persons of the Trinity based on their relationship to one another. The Father is unbegotten and eternally begets the Son, the Son is eternally begotten by the Father, and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. In this way, the Father is first, the Son second, and the Spirit is third not because of their essential properties but because of their personal, relational properties. The Reformed also stresses the importance of the Nicaean view of homoousios: that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all of one essence. 

The main thrust of the historical Reformed view against EFS comes from the fact that it seems advocates of EFS misunderstand the nature of a will. Advocates of EFS will argue that “obedience of the will is a personal property, one that is attributed only to the person of the Son,”¹⁴ thus putting the will in the personal properties of the Persons of the Trinity. However, the Reformed position places the will within the essential properties of the Trinity. By this definition, a will, even in God, is a “property of nature and not of personhood.”¹⁵ EFS argues that the Son willingly submits His will to the Father’s while retaining the same nature as the Father. However, if a will belongs to nature, then for the Son’s will to submit to the Father’s, they must have different natures. It is illogical to say that one will submits to itself. Either Jesus has the same nature and will as the Father or He has a different nature and will from the Father. 

For example, one main argument advocates of EFS will bring up is Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane before his arrest. They argue that it shows the Son’s willing submission of His will to the Father’s. However if Jesus is speaking of His divine will when praying to the Father “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), there would be a disagreement in the divine will of God which is impossible. Even if Jesus did have a separate divine will from the Father’s, they could never be at odds. That would begin the deconstruction of the entirety of the doctrine of God. 

In contrast, as Epp and the Reformed explain, “If those words, however, are the expression of Christ’s human nature, there is no contradiction.”¹⁶ Historically, Christ has been said to have two natures: one fully divine and one fully human. EFS agrees with this. In that case, using the Reformed definition of a will, Jesus has two wills: divine and human. Some advocates of EFS do not agree with this. However, as Jonathan Edwards says, the divine nature is not “not capable of suffering…neither is it capable of obedience to that law that was given to man.”¹⁷ It is essential for Christ to have a fully human nature and will to accomplish what He did. Thus, the human nature and human will of Christ are logically necessary.¹⁸

In this moment in the garden, Jesus is speaking of submitting His human will to the divine will. He is submitting His human will not to die to His and the Father’s divine will to purchase redemption in His death. Thus, this prayer in Gethsemane is not proof of the Son’s divine subordination to the Father’s divine will, but of Jesus’s human will to the Father’s divine will. 

Lastly, the historic Reformed view emphasizes the Creator-creature distinction when discussing the Trinity. The Trinity is not something the human mind can understand. Thus one must use analogous language when speaking of the Trinity. However, one mistake advocates of EFS make is confining the Trinity to human definitions or relations. This is seen most clearly in Grudem and other’s analogy to the husband-wife and father-son relationship. As Giles says,

Grudem and Ware’s characteristic depiction of God’s threefold life in heaven in human terms is thoroughly objectionable. Instead of appealing to Scripture to define divine triune relations, these theologians appeal to fallen creaturely relationships. The divine Father is likened to a human father, the Son to a wife and mother and the Spirit to a child created by his human parents.¹⁹

It is entirely wrong to confine the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity to how humanity experiences relationships. A human’s father-son relationship may be an image of the Father and Son’s but it is certainly not the other way around. 

Evaluation

It can be shown from Scripture and historic orthodoxy that the Reformed view is the most accurate representation of the key distinguishing factors of the Persons of the Trinity. The Son is undoubtedly uncreated and without ontological subordination to the Father. There is nothing in Scripture that points to the Son’s essence being different or lesser than that of the Father’s. Thus, Arian subordination is not a viable candidate.

Eternal functional subordination’s stated belief in homoousios is encouraging but it still falls short. Its misunderstanding of the will is a key problem and results at the very least in discontinuity in God, albeit unintentionally. As Epp says, “Positing an eternal subordination implies a difference in wills, and thus controversy within God.”²⁰ This simply cannot be. God cannot contradict Himself nor desire opposing outcomes of His will. If God can disagree with Himself, then the Christian reality of objective truth begins to unravel. 

Epp continues, saying that EFS “implies an inferiority of freedom within the Son which, given the will’s location in the divine essence, must imply an ontological inferiority.”²¹ If the Son has a level of freedom in His will that is subordinate to His Father’s, then His freedom must be a lower plane than that of the Father’s. Therefore, if the will is directly tied to the Person’s personal properties, then the Son must have an inferior essence. In this way, at worst, EFS results in an inequality of the Son’s essence to the Father’s without realizing it. This may very well result in an unintentional denial of homoousios, getting it dangerously close to Arian subordinationism and rejecting historic orthodoxy. 

Conclusion

In summary, Arian subordinationism presents a heresy that makes the Son ontologically subordinate to the Father. In an attempt to deny Arianism, eternal functional subordination attempts to reconcile the Son’s ontological equality with the Father, while maintaining a distinction of functional subordination between the Persons. In contrast, the historic Reformed view distinguishes the Persons in their relationship with one another while maintaining equality between them. However, it is seen that advocates of EFS misunderstand the position of the will within the essential properties of God which may lead to unintentional ontological inferiority of the Son and Spirit. Thus, the historic Reformed view must be regarded as the distinction that most correctly maintains homoousios and what is presented in Scripture.

Footnotes

1.  Stephen D. Kovach and Peter R. Schemm, Jr., A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son (Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 1999), 463. ↩︎
2.  Kovach and Schemm, Jr., A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son, 425. ↩︎
3.  Gerald L. Bray, The Eternal ‘Subordination’ of the Son of God? (Unio Cum Christo, 2018), 48. ↩︎
4.  Kovach and Schemm, Jr., A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son, 463. ↩︎
5.  Bray, The Eternal ‘Subordination’ of the Son of God?, 48–49. ↩︎
6.  Kovach and Schemm, Jr., A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son, 463. ↩︎
7.  John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 127. ↩︎
8.  Kovach and Schemm, Jr., A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son, 471. ↩︎
9.  Kovach and Schemm, Jr., A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son, 471. ↩︎
10.  Kevin Giles, The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017), 11. ↩︎
11.  Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester, UK : Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press ; Zondervan Pub. House, 1994), 459. ↩︎
12.  Giles, The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity, 11–12. ↩︎
13.  Giles, The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity, 13. ↩︎
14.  D. Glenn Butner Jr., Against Eternal Submission: Changing the Doctrine of the Trinity Endangers the Doctrine of Salvation and Women (Priscilla Papers, 2017), 16–17. ↩︎
15.  Issac Epp, The Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son Disproved Through a Synthesis of the Nature, Decree, and Work of God. (Puritan Reformed Journal, 2020), 103. ↩︎
16.  Epp, The Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son Disproved, 103. ↩︎
17.  Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F Wilson, trans. John F. Wilson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 295. ↩︎
18.  Butner, Against Eternal Submission, 18. ↩︎
19.  Giles, The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity, 12. ↩︎
20.  Epp, The Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son Disproved, 110. ↩︎
21.  Epp, The Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son Disproved, 110. ↩︎