In Barth’s section on “God the Father” in volume one of his Church Dogmatics, he makes some interesting statements about the relationship between the Father and the Son.
He opens his discussion with this affirmation of the deity of the Son:
Who is the Lord and therefore the God to whom the Bible is referring? As we have seen already, it is typical of the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New that its answer to this question does not point us primarily to a sphere beyond human history but rather to the very centre of this history.
The answer is that at the climax of the biblical witness Jesus of Nazareth is the Kyrios. He is the One who approaches man in absolute superiority. He is the self-revealing God. (I, 1, 384)
Just a little further he says,
In the first instance the New Testament ascribes the true and real deity expressed by the predicate Kyrios to One who is quite other than Jesus.
In the name Christ, which it gives to Jesus, it reminds us of the prophets, priests and kings of the Old Testament as authorised and sanctified men of Yahweh behind whom and above whom there stands the One who is primarily and properly authoritative and holy. It calls Jesus the Word or Son of God, the One who was sent into the world by God as the light and life of men. It understands the dignity of Jesus, the lordship of Jesus and the superiority of Jesus as basically different and subordinate compared to that of the Other who is properly called θεός. In the so-called Synoptic Gospels this approach is especially prominent. It almost sounds like a false note, and is certainly an enigma, when even and precisely in these Gospels Jesus is called Kyrios. . . . The One who is properly called God in the Synoptics seems unquestionably to be the “Father in heaven” who constitutes the background of the event recorded and therefore, with incomparable significance, the basis of its meaning. Even in John there not only stands the much-noted “The Father is greater than I” (Jn. 14:28) but once again Jesus consistently portrays Himself as the emissary of the Father (the μόνος ἀληθινὸς θεός, Jn. 17:3) whose life is to do His will and speak His words and finish His work, whose triumph is simply to go to the Father, and through whom men come to the Father (Jn. 14:6). (I, 1, 385)
Then he turns to Paul, who
never tired of pointing to the Father, the “Father of Jesus Christ,” who is side by side with Jesus and in some sense beyond Him and above Him. The greeting in nearly all his letters runs: Χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Does this imply that he is expressly calling “God our Father” the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ too? According to Eph. 1:17, where He is called ὁ θεὸς τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ πατὴρ πῆς δόζης this might undoubtedly be the case. Or is it that the two, θεὸς πατήρ and κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, as is assumed in the Vulgate and Luther’s translation, are set alongside one another as the common source of grace and peace? What is beyond question is that the κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός is separate from and subordinate to θεὸς πατήρ· Ἠμῖν εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατὴρ . . . καὶ εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός (1 Cor. 8:6); ὑμεῖς δὲ Χριστοῦ, Χριστὸς δὲ θεοῦ (1 Cor. 3:23); Ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν . . . κεφαλὴ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ θεός (1 Cor. 11:3). Jesus Christ is κύριος εἰς δόξαν θεοῦ πατρός (Phil. 2:11), He is the προσαγωγὴ πρὸς τὸν θεόν (Eph. 2:18). He will finally hand over the kingdom τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρί (1 Cor. 15:24). He is the εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). And so Hebrews calls Him the ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης (Heb. 1:3), the πιστὸν ὅντα τῷ ποιήσαντι αὐτόν (Heb. 3:2), who offered Himself without spot to God (Heb. 9:14) . . . . Looked at along these lines the lordship of Jesus as the Son of God is obviously only a manifestation, exercise and application of the lordship of God the Father. The essence of the deity ascribed to Jesus is to make clear and impart and give effect to who God the Father is, who God is in the true sense, and what He wills and does with man. It is to represent this God the Father. (I, 1, 385–86)
I readily admit that I’m not a Barth scholar, but I have a hard time meshing the above with the completely egalitarian picture of the Trinity that Kevin Giles tries to paint of Barth in The Trinity and Subordinationism, 87–91. It’s not at all clear that what Barth says can be explained merely in terms of the temporal incarnate ministry of Christ.
While Giles acknowledges that Barth made some statements that don’t fit well with a completely egalitarian trinitarianism (88), he suggests that Barth’s theology changed and that these earlier statements are not representative of the mature thought of Barth. Again, I haven’t read enough of Barth to be able to challenge that assertion, but I will note that the texts that led me to this passage (1 Cor 3:23; 8:6; 11:3; 15:28) don’t get later explications that contradict what Barth says here. Rather, Barth’s discussions of them elsewhere in his CD seem to concur with his earlier remarks (e.g., III, 3, 440).
I don’t like baseball and normally wouldn’t post something like this, but I was at this game last night, sitting directly behind home plate (albeit quite a few rows up) with my coworkers in the marketing department at Logos. This was certainly the most exciting part of the night. The Mariners lost 5-0 and haven’t scored in 22 innings.
I recently downloaded and installed a cool new plug-in for Microsoft Outlook called Xobni (inbox spelled backwards). It’s a collapsible sidebar that instantly provides lots of helpful data.
There are two main features:
Search: Find contacts, emails (organized by conversations!), related people, and shared files in an instant—all organized nicely in a sleek sidebar. Since Outlook 2007 has a built-in search for email messages, I wasn’t sure how helpful this aspect of Xobni would be. However, the ability to see not only emails but also contact info (which is even extracted from email messages!), file attachments, and related contacts makes it very handy.
Part One situates John’s trinitarian teaching within the context of Second Temple Jewish monotheism. Part Two examines the Gospel narrative in order to trace the characterization of God as Father, Son and Spirit, followed by a brief synthesis. Part Three deals more fully with major trinitarian themes in the Fourth Gospel, including its account of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and mission. A final chapter discusses the significance of John’s Gospel for the church’s doctrine of the Trinity, and a brief conclusion summarizes some practical implications.
James White summarizes the Christian doctrine of the Trinity this way:
Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (The Forgotten Trinity, 26)
He goes on to talk about how important it is that we distinguish Being from person.
Note immediately that we are not saying there are three Beings that are one Being, or three persons that are one person. Such would be self-contradictory. I emphasize this because, most often, this is the misrepresentation of the doctrine that is commonly found in the literature of various religions that deny the Trinity. (27)
On April 4-5, 2008, Dr. Dan Wallace, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas, will participate in a debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman, chair of the department of religious studies at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, over the textual reliability of the New Testament.
John Piper is one of my favorite living theologians. His writings and preaching have had a profound impact on my thinking, and he is regularly a means of great encouragement and motivation. I rarely find myself disagreeing with him.
I recently picked up the 24-volume John Piper Collection from Logos and have been enjoying working through Life As a Vapor. It’s composed of 31 chapters making it an ideal book to read for a month’s worth of devotional reading.
The second chapter is entitled “Suffering, Mercy, and Heavenly Regret,” in which Piper poses the question, “Is there regret in heaven?” He continues, “Can regret be part of the ever-increasing, unspeakable joy of the age to come, purchased by Jesus Christ (Romans 8:32)? My answer is yes” (19).
In his section on the Trinity in The Doctrine of God,1 Frame gives four lines of explanation for texts that teach that the Son is in some sense less than or subject to the Father. He is commenting specifically on John 14:28; and 1 Corinthians 11:3; and 15:28.
In his first comment, Frame offers what strikes me as a potentially helpful perspective on the issue of the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. Complementarians and egalitarians agree that during the incarnation the Son was functionally subordinate to the Father. Where they disagree is (1) how long that subordination lasts and (2) on what basis it exists. Frame thinks it lasts eternally on the basis of His eternal humanity.
Said at Southern 
John Piper is one of my favorite living theologians. His writings and preaching have had a profound impact on my thinking, and he is regularly a means of great encouragement and motivation. I rarely find myself disagreeing with him.
In his section on the Trinity in 
