Jesus And The Father by Kevin Giles

Author:Kevin Giles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310866381
Publisher: ZONDERVAN

CHAPTER

5

THE FATHER AND THE SON

DIVIDED OR UNDIVIDED

IN POWER AND AUTHORITY

We now come to the most fundamental and distinctive element in the contemporary evangelical doctrine of the Trinity that I am disputing: the eternal subordination of the Son in authority. Professor Wayne Grudem is emphatic that this idea stands right at the heart of his understanding of the Trinity. It is his view that the Father has “the role of commanding, directing, and sending,” and the Son the role of “obeying, going as the Father sends, and revealing God to us.”1 It is differing authority, he says, that primarily distinguishes the divine persons. He writes, “Authority and submission between the Father and the Son . . . and the Holy Spirit, is the fundamental difference between the persons of the Trinity.”2 And again, “If we did not have such differences in authority in the relationships among the members of the Trinity, then we would not know of any differences at all.”3 There is for him nothing more important than this authority structure in the Trinity and between men and women. It is “the most fundamental aspect of interpersonal relationships in the entire universe.”4

The 1999 Sydney Anglican Diocesan Doctrine Commission Report, “The Doctrine of the Trinity and Its Bearing on the Relationship of Men and Women,”5 also makes the eternal subordination of the Son in authority the most fundamental issue. The whole document is predicated on the premise that the Father is (authoritatively) “head” over the Son just as husbands in the home and men in the church are (authoritatively) “head” over women. In this report the eternal subordination of the Son in authority is predicated on the differences in the being or nature of the person of the Son, not simply in differing roles or functions, and it is said to be involuntary. The authors write, “The Son’s obedience to the Father arises from the very nature of his being as Son. His freedom consists in doing what is natural to him, which is to submit to his Father . . . he is incapable of doing other than the Father’s will.”6 His obedience to the Father is not “voluntary, temporary, and personal.”7 Rather it reflects “the essence of the eternal relationship between them.”8

Robert Doyle, a key contributor to this report, writing in 2004 is still arguing for “the priority of the Father” in authority in the Godhead. He designates the Father the “eternal Monarch” or sole ruler and says the Son defines himself “in subordination to that monarchy.”9 The American evangelical theologian Bruce Ware is of the same opinion. In rejecting the egalitarian case that the Son is only subordinated in authority to the Father in taking the form of a servant and in becoming man, he says, “An eternal relationship of authority and obedience is grounded in the eternal, immanent, inner-trinitarian relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”10 Then later he adds, “The authority-obedience relation of Father and Son in the immanent Trinity is mandatory if we are to account for God the Father’s purposes to elect and save.

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