Trinity and Headship

In the current issue of The Heythrop Journal , Brian Trainor analyzes the uses of Trinitarian theology among evangelical egalitarians and among evangelical “conservatives.” He finds both wanting, and offers some fresh reflections in an effort to break the impasse. He charges egalitarians with “‘homogenizing’ the three Divine Persons” and for failing to endorse “true and genuine differentiation in the inner life of the Trinity.” On the other side, “conservatives” have retreated into forms of subordinationism. Everyone distinguishes ontology from role or function, but the results are not satisfying:

Bruce Ware “claims that the position or proper role of the Son of God in this functional hierarchy vis-a-vis the Father is to be ‘equal in being, eternally subordinate in role,’ for there is an ‘eternal relationship of authority and obedience grounded in the eternal immanent inter-Trinitarian relations of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ In a similar vein, George Knight III speaks of a ‘chain of subordination’ in the inner life of the Trinity.” Grudem claims that “while the Father and Son are both divine, yet the Son is eternally subordinate in role and authority to the Father, for the Father has ‘the role of commanding, directing, and sending’ and the Son has ‘the role of obeying, going as the Father sends, and revealing God to us.’” Functional difference, sure; functional superiority and inferiority, not good, for Filial Godhood is equally valuable as Paternal Godhood.

Some conservatives acknowledge the “mutual submission” or “mutual deference” of the Persons, but as Trainor sees it, this motif “is not emphasised and it seems that it has, indeed, become increasingly de-emphasised.” He cites Grudem’s claim that “‘supreme authority always belongs to the Father’ and that the expression ‘seated at the right hand of the Father’ indicates that Jesus is second to God the Father in authority.” That is alarming to say the least.

By contrast, Trainor argues for a “triple sovereignty.”

According to this patristic idea, “the Son is sovereign as the supreme, absolute ‘object’ of the Father’s being and disposition. What is in the ‘mind’ of the Father is sovereign but what is in the mind of the Father is the Son, the eternally beloved object of his being as Father, in much the same was as a mother ‘is’ . . . the ‘consciousness of her new-born child.’ The Son is the ‘eternal, absolute end’ of his (God’s) being as Father; the Father is the ‘eternal, absolute origin of his (God’s) being as Son, and this sovereignty of each in the ‘divine consciousness/perspective’ (for want of a better term) of the other ‘is’ (or eternally generates) the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is sovereign in the sense that love, or the Spirit of Love, is the supreme, sole and eternal ‘origin and end’ of the life of the Trinity, whereas the Father is sovereign, not so much in authority, as in the sense that he is the ‘author-ial’ source of all that is . . . . The Father is Author; the Son Authors; the Son is the ‘verb’ of the Father’s ‘noun.”

He suggests that “we should think . . . in terms of the Son having all authority and the Father having none. Jesus is not second to the Father in authority, for Jesus is the Word of the Father, is the authority of the Father as original Author, is the One who conveys, ‘authors,’ makes present, bears, crystallises and expresses his Person, the Father as original Author.” My one quibble here is the thought that the Father “has none.” Not so: Because the Son is idios to the Father’s being, the Father “has” the authority/authoring that is the Son just as surely as He has His Fatherhood or anything else for that matter. Other than that, Trainor’s comments seem entirely Athanasian.

Practically, this works out in the family as a model of servant headship, service through authority. Trainor summarizes a lovely passage from John Paul II who “unequivocally . . . endorses what Paul teaches in Ephesians 5:22-23 concerning the authority of the father as head of the home, but he (John Paul II) also insists on ‘mutual subjection’ or a kind of ‘triple subjection,’ that is, on the subjection of the wife to the husband as ‘head’ of the house, of the husband to the wife as the ‘heart’ of the home, and of both to Christ as their common Lord and Saviour.”