Someone from Elgin, Illinois (which I figured out by looking up his IP address) just tried to leave this encouraging comment on my contact page:

I just saw your post about Gilbert Bilezikian may I say that you my friend are out to lunch and need to read you bible more careful and instead of speaking out against this wonderful man why not engage him in a  public debate you may learn something from him.

Here’s a corrected edition for easier reading:

I just saw your post about Gilbert Bilezikian. May I say that you, my friend, are out to lunch and need to read your Bible more carefully. Instead of speaking out against this wonderful man, why don’t you engage him in a public debate? You may learn something from him.

I’ve received a couple of comments like this recently, so I thought I’d share some thoughts and give some suggestions for commenting on my blog.

1. Please don’t waste your time trying to leave a comment if you don’t have anything substantive to say. In case you’re wondering, “I think your wrong, you dummy,” is not a substantive comment.
2. I’m not sure why he didn’t leave the comment on the post he had a problem with. At least there it would have been at least somewhat relevant to the page.
3. While the individual did leave his first name, he didn’t leave his last name or a link to anything identifiable. This is hardly more helpful than anonymity. It’s nice to know a little bit about the person you’re having a conversation with (not that he was actually interested in a meaningful conversation).
4. I don’t know the last time I’ve seen so many independent clauses strung together without even using a single comma. If I were a grammar teacher, I’d certainly tuck this one away for my students.
5. I think he’s referring to my post “Hierarchy Does Not Necessitate Opposition.” Instead of engaging my critique of Bilezikian’s (and Giles’s) statement, he makes unfounded accusations. Telling someone he’s out to lunch and needs to read his Bible more carefully doesn’t accomplish much of anything–especially when you’re trying to make a new friend. It may be true, but please demonstrate it with cogent argumentation and careful exegesis.
6. Though I’ve never met him, I don’t doubt that Bilezekian is a wonderful man. But I’m not quite sure what that has to do with the points I brought up in my post. Wonderful men can be horribly wrong.
7. I’m quite certain that if I engaged Dr. Bilezikian in a public debate, I would learn something from him. I learn something from just about everyone whom I engage in a debate. But I’d question whether challenging someone to a public debate is the solution to every disagreement in life. I also doubt that Dr. Bilezikian has either the time or the interest to debate me publicly (or privately).

If you have something to contribute and are interested in edifying dialog, I invite your comments. Otherwise, please don’t waste your (and my) time.

In tonight’s debate, McCall and Yandell tried to make the case that the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father entails a denial of homoousion.

The Argument

Here’s their argument:

1. If the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father in all possible worlds, then the Son is necessarily subordinate to the Father.
2. If the Son is necessarily subordinate to the Father, then the Son is essentially subordinate to the Father.
3. Thus, the Son, as essentially subordinate to the Father, is of a different essence or nature than the Father, which entails a denial of homoousion.

My First Response

My first line of response is to show that this argument can be equally applied to any eternal difference between the Father and the Son. Let’s take the Son’s property of sonship and apply their own argument to it.

1. If the Son is eternally the Son and the Father is eternally not the Son in all possible worlds, then the Son is necessarily the Son and the Father is necessarily not the Son.
2. If the Son is necessarily the Son and the Father is necessarily not the Son, then the Son is essentially the Son and the Father is essentially not the Son.
3. Thus, the Son, as essentially the Son, and the Father, as essentially not the Son, are of a different essence or nature, which entails a denial of homoousion.

The result of extending the argument this way is that it demonstrates—assuming the legitimacy of the argument—that there can be no eternal difference of any kind without denying homoousion. But Yandell himself affirmed in the debate that the Son alone has the property of being the Son, and the Father alone the property of being the Father, and the Spirit alone the property of being the Spirit. Yet, according to his own argument, he must deny homoousion because these eternal differences constitute necessary differences, which constitute essential differences.

Yandell and McCall are attempting to affirm three propositions that simply cannot stand together. Here are the three incompatible propositions:

1. The argument is valid.
2. There are eternal differences among the three persons of the Trinity.
3. The Father and the Son are homoousios.

If they wish to maintain their claim to rationality, they must either deny (1) the legitimacy of the argument, (2) that the Son alone has the property of being the Son, etc. (which amounts to a denial of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity), (3) the doctrine of homoousion, or (4) some combination of the three. At least one of these has to go. All three cannot coexist.¹

My Second Response

My second line of response to this argument is to show that it confuses categories—just like Kevin Giles does in his unhelpful books on the subject.

Assuming for a moment that we should not deny that there are some eternal differences among the three persons of the Trinity, which, again, even Yandell acknowledged when he said that the Son alone has the property of being the Son, there must be some way to account for these differences without abandoning homoousion. I make this claim on the basis that Scripture seems to teach both.

First, it is important to point out that McCall and Yandell seem to be using only two categories: essence and function; while Grudem and Ware use three: essence, person, and function. Thus what Grudem and Ware mean by essence and person end up getting merged together into McCall and Yandell’s single category of essence.

In the two-category system, we need a place to put personal properties like fatherhood, sonship, and “spiritness.” Do they belong to essence or function? I doubt anyone would want to maintain that sonship is simply something the Son does and not something that He possesses or is. But does sonship belong to the one divine essence? No. If it did, then all three persons would be the Son, since they all share equally the one divine essence. So where do we put it? We must, in a two-category system, differentiate between the one divine essence shared equally by all three persons and their own individual essences that constitute what each person holds uniquely. This double use of the term essence is what seems to cause confusion for so many, so this might not be the best set of terms to use.²

The important thing to note, though, is that this necessary distinction allows part of their conclusion—with a minor modification—(i.e., “the Son, as essentially the Son, and the Father, as essentially not the Son, are of a different essence different essences”) to be affirmed without denying homoousion, because it is the individual essences, not the shared essence, that the conclusion necessarily has in view (i.e., since the major and minor premises concern not what they share, but what they hold uniquely).

In the three-category system, the term essence is reserved for the one shared divine nature, while the term person is used for those properties that belong uniquely to each. So fatherhood, sonship, and “spiritness” would not belong to the one divine essence, but to the category of person. This approach has the advantage of using separate terms and avoiding confusion introduced by the two-category system, but it’s not without its challenges.³

It doesn’t really matter to me what we call the category that accounts for their differences. The fact is that there must be such a category or we are forced to abandon rationality or deny clear biblical teaching.

Regardless of which system we go with (perhaps there’s a better option?), we must account for what the three share in common and what they hold uniquely, even if we do have to struggle to find the right terms. My main point is this: if the persons of the Trinity can equally share the one divine essence without obliterating their differences of being Father, Son, and Spirit, then we at least have a way to conceive of how they can equally share the one divine essence without obliterating their differences of authority and submission.

In the next post, I’ll respond to the second argument concerning the Father’s supposed inability to become incarnate.

See these previous posts of mine for the context of this post (most recent on top):

• My Question for Dr. Yandell
• Trinity Debate—Live
• Ware–Grudem vs. McCall–Yandell on the Trinity

Update 1: For clarification, I added “in all possible worlds” to the first premise of the argument. I was assuming it all along, but should have stated it explicitly to represent the argument most faithfully and avoid misunderstanding.

Update 2: Replaced my misuse of homoousian, which typically refers to someone who believes in homoousion, with the more appropriate homoousion.

Update 3: The discussion has continued over on James Gordon’s blog, Conquering Thirst.

Footnotes

1. One other possibility would be to demonstrate that this eternal difference (i.e., fatherhood, sonship, and “spiritness”) is categorically different from the other eternal difference (i.e., authority and submission) and thus the argument cannot be extended in this way. However, I cannot conceive how such a step could be successful. ↩
2. Yes, this does essentially become a three-category system as well: (shared) essence, (individual) essences, and function. ↩
3. What really is person? And how precisely does it relate to essence? Is person really any different from the individual essences mentioned above? If essence is what someone or something fundamentally is, aren’t the things assigned to person (i.e., fatherhood and being in authority on the one hand and sonship and being in submission on the other) also part of what the persons fundamentally are? I’m inclined to think that person is a somewhat arbitrary label whose merit is that it avoids the confusion of (shared) essence and (individual) essences. For more on this, see my previous post: Is the Trinity One “What” and Three “Who’s”? ↩

A few weeks ago, a friend informed me of this upcoming debate between Bruce Ware & Wayne Grudem and Tom McCall & Keith Yandell. It’s very relevant to my dissertation topic, so I’m looking forward to hearing the results. Hopefully audio and transcripts will be made available.

I read a paper from Tom McCall several months ago on this subject and was not very satisfied with his approach. I think he oversimplifies matters and confuses categories (especially regarding the notion of essence—much like Kevin Giles does). I have had the privilege recently of interacting with Bruce Ware a little on these matters. While I don’t necessarily agree with everything as he states it and am still in the process of working through some of these issues, I’m far more comfortable with Ware’s approach.

Here are the details of the event from the Henry Center blog:

Ware-Grudem Vs. McCall-Yandell on the Trinity

The Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is excited to announce that on October 9th, 2008 at 6:30pm, it will host a Trinity Debate at the TEDS Chapel featuring Drs. Bruce Ware (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) and Wayne Grudem (Phoenix Seminary) versus Drs. Tom McCall (TEDS) and Keith Yandell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) on the question:

“Do relations of authority and submission exist eternally among the Persons of the Godhead?”

This debate follows current argumentation in the academic sphere between the two sides. Though a theological exchange between expert scholars, this event will prove beneficial for Christians of all backgrounds. The doctrine of the Trinity is at the heart of the Christian faith and takes into account questions of scriptural interpretation, theological synthesis, and philosophical reasoning. Determining the identities and roles of the persons of the Godhead is thus of great importance not only to the academician, but to the pastor, the layperson, the student and all who would seek to probe and comprehend the beautiful complexity of orthodox Christianity.

The Center anticipates that the debate will be lively, informative, charitable, enjoyable, and, we trust, helpful to a wide variety of Christians and even non-Christians who wish to better understand one of the central realities of the faith. This event is not intended to be intramural, but rather to stimulate discussion that clarifies the Word of God in the life of Christ’s church. All should consider themselves invited and welcome to this free evening of debate and dialogue over theological issues that matter.

If you hear anything about audio recordings or transcripts, please let me know.

HT: Rod Decker

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’m baffled when I read egalitarians who think that functional hierarchy presupposes disunity or the prospect of it.

Take, for example, this statement by Gilbert Bilezikian:

One of the weirdest heresies that has been generated in the last century pertains to the postulation of a hierarchical order within the members of the Trinity—as if there ever could exist a threat of discord or of misconduct that would require the exercise of authority within the oneness of the Godhead.¹

Kevin Giles is guilty of this fallacious reasoning as well:

What seems to have happened is that contemporary conservative evangelicals who are opposed to women’s liberation in the church and the home have read back into the Trinity their understanding of the subordination of women: God the Father has become the eternal “head” of Christ, and the differences among the divine persons have been redefined in terms of differing roles or functions. Rather than working as one, the divine persons have been set in opposition—with the Father commanding and the Son obeying.²

I see three possible ways to account for statements like these:

1. These men genuinely cannot comprehend how functional hierarchy can exist without sin.
2. These men have intentionally used fallacious argumentation to defeat their opponents.
3. These men have unintentionally conflated unrelated ideas in their zeal to disprove what they consider erroneous.³

That functional hierarchy can exist without disunity seems so obvious as not to need any defense, but perhaps it does. So here are a few lines of evidence:

1. Hierarchy existed prior to the fall when opposition and disunity were nonexistent.
2. Hierarchy will exist in the new earth, where there will be no disunity nor even the possibility of it.
3. Hierarchy exists among the elect and sinless angelical beings. The term ἀρχάγγελος (1 Thes 4:16; Jude 9) refers to “a member of the higher ranks in the celestial hierarchy.”⁴ Would anyone think that this hierarchy presupposes “a threat of discord or of misconduct” and results in the angels being “set in opposition” to each other?
4. During the incarnation there was clearly a relationship of authority and submission between the Father and the Son,⁵ and there wasn’t a hint of opposition or “a threat of discord or of misconduct.” If hierarchy and perfect unity can coexist for a time, they can coexist for all eternity as well.

I highly doubt that Bilezikian and Giles have never taken the time to think about how functional hierarchy does not in any way necessitate disunity. Men of their intelligence would certainly realize something so obvious. So #1 is unlikely. In love (1 Cor 13:7) I’m inclined to give these men the benefit of the doubt and not charge them with intentionally using fallacious argumentation. So #2 is out. That leaves explanation #3: perhaps they have made some unguarded statements that unintentionally create straw men of their opponents’ position. This kind of thing is easy to do, and I’ve been guilty of it plenty of times myself. I hope it serves as a reminder that will help me to strive to be fair with my opponents in the same way that I want them to be fair with me (Mat 7:12).

What am I missing here? Is the point that I think is so obvious really not that obvious? Or is this just another example of Christian argumentation falling short of what it should be, even if unintentionally so?

Update: Mike mentioned my post at his blog. I responded with a comment.

Footnotes

1. Kevin Giles, Jesus and the Father (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 1, emphasis mine. ↩
2. The Trinity and Subordinationism (Downers Grove: IVP, 2002), 16, emphasis mine. ↩
3. In all fairness, a fourth option might be that they are correct in their contention that hierarchy necessities disunity. But even if they are correct, this is clearly not what egalitarians maintain, though both Bilezikian and Giles make it sound otherwise. ↩
4. BDAG, 137. ↩
5. Complementarians and egalitarians agree on this much. ↩