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<\/a>Bruce A. Ware and John Starke (editors)<\/strong><\/span>\nOne God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nWheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015.
\nAvailable at Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n
This volume contains a number of essays that deal with the theme of Trinity. But the single biggest problem with this book is that it is not actually about the Trinity. It is in fact about gender roles in church and family. It is the attempt to argue that the hierarchy within the triune God is translatable into a hierarchy between male-female relationships since men and women reflect the image of God. So just as the Son submits to the Father, so too does the wife submit to the husband. The proof of this is the fact that the first three essays of the book are by Wayne Grudem\u2019s on \u201cDoctrinal Deviations in Evangelical-Feminist Arguments about the Trinity,\u201d Christopher Cowan on \u201cI Always Do \u00a0What Pleases Him: The Father\u00a0and Son in the Gospel of John,\u201d and Kyle Claunch, \u201cDoes 1 Cor 11:3 Ground Gender Complementarity in the Immanent Trinity?\u201d In other words, the editors are trying to use the Trinity to bankroll a particular view of women, gender roles, church, and family.<\/p>\n
Among the essays, I think the \u201canchor\u201d essay for this volume is Kyle Claunch on 1 Cor 11:3, which admirably\u00a0tries to\u00a0show analogical or indirect evidence to ground the Son\u2019s submission in the immanent Trinity. Jim Hamilton tries to argue for something similar about 1 Corinthians 15. John Starke does\u00a0his best to show that Augustine\u2019s conception of eternal generation supports a notion of a particular order in the Trinity characterized by the Son\u2019s submission. These were the more interesting contributions in my opinion.<\/p>\n
As you can imagine, this type of theology \u2013 the so-called complementarian view of the Trinity \u2013 has prompted no\u00a0small sway of responses. In the most recent issue of Evangelical Quarterly<\/em>, Kevin Giles (\u201cDefining the Error Called Subordinationism,\u201d EQ\u00a0<\/em>87 [2015] 207-24)\u00a0has repeated his\u00a0objections to complementarian views of the Trinity: (1) There is a subordination\u00a0of the Son in function, rank, status, and divinity, and the development of a hierarchy within the God-head; (2) Any functional subordination implies an ontological subordination; and (3) There is a subordination of the Son in terms of power and authority. Giles defines subordinationism as follows:<\/p>\n Subordinationism is the error of sub-ordering the Son and\/or Spirit below the Father in any way within the eternal life of God, It involves explicitly or implicitly denying the unequivocal unity and co-equality of the eternally and immutably differentiated three divine persons who are the one God, thereby dividing and separating the divine persons. Very commonly this error arises because the voluntary and temporal subordination of the Son in the economy for our salvation is read back into the immanent Trinity (the triune God as he is himself).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is the error that Giles believes such complementarians have committed by trying to tie their views\u00a0of gender submission into submission within the God-head.<\/p>\n Stephen Holmes, in response to reviews of his work, says the reason why he never engaged the complementarian view of the Trinity is because \u201cit is impossible to square this idea with classical Trinitarian orthodoxy; this seems to me to be merely obviously. The fact is that the concept only makes any sense with an excessively \u2018social\u2019 doctrine of the Trinity; considered against the classical doctrine, it falls into that celebrated class of ideas that are \u2018not even wrong\u2019 but just utterly incoherent\u201d (The Holy Trinity Revisited<\/em>, p. 154).<\/p>\n I\u2019ve argued in two TrinJ articles that, yes, the economic relationship, even the submission\/obedience that the Son offers to the Father, can be correlated with immanent and eternal Trinitarian relations. However, that should not be constituted as a hierarchy or a subordination, but rather as part of the Son\u2019s obedient self-distinction from the Father (a la Pannenberg). What is more, while there is an analogy between Father and Son in headship which is applied by Paul in 1 Cor 11:3 to husbands and wives, it is only analogous for a particular cultural setting, and not intrinsic to the ontologies of the Godhead or constitutive for\u00a0human beings. What is more, as I joke to my students, applying immanent and intra-Trinitarian relationships to your marriage only makes sense if your marriage consists of two guys\u00a0and a eunuch.\u00a0 While that might be possible in the state of Massachusetts, I doubt it is possible in Most American states.<\/p>\n There are also several omissions from this volume, not the least on how their thesis relates to the Cappodocians. In terms of contemporary research, the work of Steven Holmes could have been engaged (though admittedly, it might not have come out in time), and also Scott Harrower\u2019s thesis<\/a> that pushes back on the use of Rahner\u2019s Rule to ground Jesus\u2019 economic obedience in the immanent Trinity. Personally, I\u2019m still in favor of Rahner\u2019s Rule, however, Harrower\u2019s criticisms do need to be addressed. Graham Cole\u2019s lecture on Trinity without Tiers<\/a> also merited\u00a0attention too.<\/p>\n I would not call this complementarian view of the Trinity a strictly Arian account as some allege, since the contributors do verbally declare the Son\u2019s eternality and equality to the Father. However, when you\u00a0use and celebrate the words \u201csubordination\u201d and \u201chierarchy\u201d to describe\u00a0the God-head \u2013 descriptions the \u00a0Orthodox have historically rejected \u2013 then you are flirting with one lady who looks awfully like like Arius\u2019 half-sister, Homoianism. Given\u00a0the centrality of this school of thought around Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware, I propose \u2013 for discussion \u2013 whether it is apt to start referring to \u201cSouthern Baptist Homoianism.\u201d Comments for and against appreciated!<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve said once before and so I say again: We need a theological restraining order to prevent anyone on either side of the gender war trying to use the Trinity to establish their views of gender. I\u2019m not saying that we should not reflect on the Father-Son relationship (contra the preface on p. 14), only restrain applications to a sensible plane (see for instance Graham Cole\u2019s essay in the John Feinberg festschrift!). The fact that the classical view of the Trinity is being pejoratively labeled as \u201cfeminist\u201d and revisionist views of the Trinity are being called \u201ccomplementarian\u201d is proof that gender issues are driving the whole discussion and even\u00a0the taxonomy of views. It seems to be an exercise in tribal identity formation- if you want to be part of the complementarian tribe, well, then you better\u00a0 have THIS view of the Trinity \u2026 or you might look like a feminist! It is getting weird people. You won\u2019t find Graham Cole, Kevin Vanhoozer, Timothy George, or Gerald Bray arguing for this stuff \u2026 and there\u2019s a reason for that!<\/p>\n For an entree into this debate, see Dennis W. Jowers and H. Wayne House (eds.),\u00a0The New Evangelical Subordinationism? Perspectives on the Equality of God the Father and God the Son<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bruce A. Ware and John Starke (editors) One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015. Available at Amazon.com This volume contains a number of essays that deal with the theme of Trinity. But the single biggest problem with this book is that it is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n