Relationships within the Trinity

Good idea, @mitchellmckain. Sometimes rabbit trails peter out, but when two separate topics are being discussed at the same time in the same thread, it makes senses to disentangle them.

You are using the false choice. What you need to see is that there are many situations where entities lives are ruled by real dualities. If you take a fish out of water with few exceptions, it will die. On the other hand you before that you could not fly because God did not give you wings, but if you go the airport, you can fly.

The fish does not have free will, humans do. Clearly God does too. Jesus has free will that is not limited in any way. Subjection is a state that limits our will. If I am in prison I am subject to the rules of the prison and what the guards tell me to do. I have no control over this, except to obtain my freedom.

Today we do not have people who are considered subservient to others. In the past this was untrue, slavery existed. Do you really think that Jesus Christ was a slave to the Father? Is Grudem actually saying that women should be slaves to their husbands?

I don’t think you are hearing me but I will repeat this one more time. I absolutely am subordinate to, in subjection to, and subservient to my commanding officer and all officers appointed over me. I am bound to obey any and all lawful orders. I am in complete subjection to my authorities in many, many aspects of my life. This in no way takes away my free will. If you reject this, we will have to leave it there.

I wouldn’t quibble about terms, though Paul says that Jesus took the form of a “slave” (δοῦλος) and made himself obedient (ὑπήκοος) even unto death, so I’ll let you determine your own conclusions.

Even so, regardless of whether we consider Christ as a slave to his father, Paul certainly described himself as a “slave” (δοῦλος) of Christ numerous times. Shall we conclude then that this means Paul had similarly lost any free will or free choice insofar as he had become a slave of Christ?

Not to mention, we ourselves are directed to be servants/slaves of Christ. There goes our free will, I suppose.

Ideally, the concept of a Triune God should lead to a better understanding (in the limited human mind) of how we can lead a life most pleasing to our Creator. The discussions on this Forum (and the links provided) indicate that this desired effect has NOT been achieved. On the contrary, attempts to “understand God” by using the word, Trinity, have resulted in a ‘theological weed patch’ since the early days of the Christian Church. Lumping together Jesus’ role as Savior, making it his ‘last name’, Christ, just adds to the confusion. Looking to the future, if we Christians cannot agree on just what the Faith in a Triune God entails, how can we look forward to the monotheistic peoples enjoying a peaceful Earth together? Don’t we Earthlings have enough long range problems to overcome without warring over the best way to serve our Creator?

IMHO, this is a good way of explaining how one aspect of the eternal God works to perfect the spirit/intellect (wherever arises in the Universe) so that it becomes the Image of its Creator; i.e. chooses to join in co-creation. It may be a futile exercise to attribute Human characteristics (obedience, subjugation, etc) to the multitude of aspects of our Creator God.
Al Leo

The question has two aspects. If I have free will, but I am unable to exercise it, do I really have it. If legally I have the right to vote, but somehow I am unable to exercise it, so I really have it. On the other hand if I have the right to vote and for some reason I choose not to use it, then clearly the responsibility is on me.

We are talking as to whether Jesus was subservient to the Father by nature, that is necessity or He has a free will whereby He is voluntarily subject to the Father, not by necessity.
Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV2011)
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Since Jesus took the form of a Servant of His own free will, He was not subject to Gad the Father. Even so since Jesus followed the example of the Father, He did what the Father did, then the Bible says that God the Father acts as a Servant to humans.

If Jesus had free will, but chose to be subject to the Father, that is fine. However Jesus Christ is God which means that He is Omniscient and Omnipresent. So why does Jesus need to be subject to the Father to know the Truth and to be the Logos. How can God be dependent on God, as you are dependent up your commanding officer?

It has been a long time since I read up on this stuff, but if I remember right the main problem is that the historic creeds say the members of the Trinity are equal in power, glory, and honor. The Athanasian Creed says “And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal.” This is talking about their being., their “god-ness.”

When you talk about how they operate in the “economy” of redemption, the Father sends the Son and the Spirit, The Son and the Spirit do the will of the Father, The Father exalts the Son, and that seem to indicate the Trinity functions with the Father exercising authority and the Son submitting to that authority. But when you try to make that authority somehow part of what makes the Father the Father, not just a description of how the Trinity acts in the world to save people, then you are messing with the coequality of the Trinity because you are saying their is something ontologically different about their “god-ness”

They try to argue that men’s authority over women is grounded in their ontology just like the Father’s authority over the son is grounded in their ontology, they refer to 1 Corinthians 11:3 (“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.”), and conclude women are subordinate to men for all eternity. I have never said it was a good argument.

Mike Bird is my favorite:

I find it pointless to use the Trinity to argue for subordination in marriage relationships, unless your marriage includes an older man, a younger man, and a eunuch.

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The Father exercising authority, and the son obeying, and all the other outworkjngs of the trinity in salvation, then, were simply arbitrary? They flipped a proverbial coin, or drew straws, and it was determined that the Father would send the son, and for that reason there is authority flowing from Father to son and the son obeying, but it could just have easily been the reverse? this has nothing to do with their eternal personal identity and/or relationships?

Yes! This is a great summary, @Christy, it really gets to the nub of the issue. Thank you.

The idea of the Son choosing to submit to the Father of his own volition and desire is nothing new. In Reformed theology is it traces its roots through many 20th Century Theologians down the Reformers (Calvin, for example) and from their back to the Church Fathers (Like the Capidocians, as formalised in the Athanasian Creed). One could even make a case for Enteral Subordination here by arguing that though he was co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, the Son has always chosen of his own will to submit to the Father.

If Grudem and Ware had said that God intends for wives to submit to there husbands out of love for them, just as the Son chooses to submit to the Father out of love for him then that would be one thing. It is still a bit suspect since the common comparison in marriage is not Father and Son, but Christ and Church (Ephesians 5:23-31). But perhaps the case could have been made.

However, as Christy said, the issue was how they made this an argument from divine nature (rather than divine choice). In other words, arguing that submission to the Father was not something the Son made a decision about (wherever that decision was made), but rather something he had too because he was the Son. Here they go way beyond what Reformed Theologians have said in the past.

Personally, to make sense of this issue, I think Grudem and Ware’s particular abuse of Trinitarian theology has to remain hitched to their abuse of complementarity. I believe they were motivated by a desire to vanquish feminist theology once and for all and so went looking for a theological Excalibur which would overcome all counter-arguments. But whilst they were motivated by a desire to defend what they saw as the biblical approach to marriage they ultimately ended up undermining it. Ironically, in attempting to counter what they saw as insidious and damaging false teaching around marriage and gender roles they ended up creating an equally insidious and damaging false teaching of their own. An important reminder that Newton’s third law can do theology too.

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I don’t see how arbitrary authority necessarily follows logically from coeternal and coequal. And I think the Trinity has mystery enough to get tripped up on without worrying too much about the basis of the “right” the Father has to exercise authority over the Son. Rights are not a biblical idea. I’m fine with affirming Church tradition that the Father does exercise authority over the Son, the Son does submit to the Father, and they are also equal in power and glory and the Son is not “less” in any way. Making “authority” a divine attribute instead of a function taken on to accomplish the Missio Dei, and then ascribing that attribute to the Father and only to a lesser degree to the Son makes the Son, less, which is heretical. Can you imagine if we said love was a divine attribute, God is love, but based on how the Trinity functions, we can see the Son is ontologically more love than the Father, because the Son sacrifices and the Father judges?

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Arbitrary authority does not follow from the power of God. Authority does because if God is All-Knowing and All-Wise then what God does and says must be Good. However God the Father and God the Son are both God and being both God They are both equal. Being God they are both perfectly Knowing and perfectly Wise.

The Father cannot be less perfect or more perfect than the Son. Those who say that then Son is less perfect than the Father say that the Son is not God. As I understand it Grudem claims that the Son is not less than the Father, but the Son is eternally subject to the Father, for no reason because the Son is not dependent on the Father.

Humans are used to hierarchies, but we are taught in Scripture that there are not hierarchy in God, because each person of the Trinity is Perfect, that is They are One. An the other hand the Bible says that each Person of the Trinity is separate and unique., that is They are Three.

What follows is that all Three are Perfect, but the Father is characterized primarily as the Creator of the magnificent universe and humanity, the Son is characterized as the Logos and Savior through knowledge and salvation, and the Holy Spirit is characterized as being the Spirit of Love. They are the same in authority and are not subject to any One. “You shall not have any gods before God.”

Good thoughts, one minor quibble only because it is a peeve of mine…

  • The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnaceThe Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace…

  • For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

  • When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

  • Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.

It is the Son that judges, no?

The Father and the Son are one. Both were creators of the universe, both sacrificed, both judge. One must be more careful. Even this talk of an economic Trinity must not become any kind of modalism. They are different/separate with regards to persons only and in ways that are purely relational. The Father sent His Son and the Son was sent by the Father.

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Agreed. I was not saying the Father does not judge, just clarifying that the Son does.

In my opinion, all this confusion can be avoided if the Church looked to what the Early Church Father’s and Creeds say about the Trinity then all this confusion will go away. Mostly the Athanasian Creed.

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Agreed. I’d give this 10 hearts if I could. As Charles Spurgeon is purported to have said “counter the new heresy with the old orthodoxy.”

Though I would humbly add to that mix Calvin’s discussion of the Trinity in the Institutes (Vol 1, chapter 13) which can be found free online with a quick Google search. I’d also commend Louis Berkhof’s excellent historical overview in his Systematic Theology.

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Of course. There is a verse that says the Son was given all authority in heaven, earth, and under the earth. My point was to point out a form of reasoning that is ineffective and breaks down, so thank you for illustrating it for me. :slight_smile:

I don’t like the Athanasian creed (not agreed to by any ecumenical council) because it makes up too much stuff which is not in the Bible. I am a 5 solas protestant. Yeah, as I like to remind people, the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t in the Bible either. But I do think the whole of scripture leads us to the doctrine of the Trinity. But nothing in the Bible even remotely supports the idea that God is three and only three. That Athanasian creed version of the Trinity I do not accept. I believe in a God who is infinite and unlimited in every way, except where He chooses to limit Himself. But unless you are going with Arianism, the persons of God are not some contingent matter resulting from a choice made by God. The three are simply the persons of God which God has revealed to us and it seems absurd to presume that we know all there is to know of God.

In a way this is connected with the same dilemma and dissonance that has caused many like Einstein to discard the idea of a personal God because it seems inherently limited and too much like anthropomorphically projecting ourselves upon God. But God without the elements of personhood is even more limited than a God who is a person. So my solution is to go with a transpersonal God, who has all the elements and abilities of a person but without the limitation that come with a singularity of personhood. And this is clearly very far from being like us – certainly not a God made in the image of man.

The matter and nature of the Triune God is a mystery of faith and it must be taken by faith that God is three in one. The creeds are there to guide people away from errors. While we cannot deeply know the nature of God, we worship an intimate and personal God who at the same time wants us to know Him deeply. I don’t really bother myself with the Triune nature of God (I find it far beyond human comprehension in my opinion but accept that its a thing that exist.) and bother myself with personally knowing God in my heart and forming a relationship with Him.

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The matter and nature of the infinite God is certainly beyond our finite comprehension but I see no need to hide anything behind the word “mystery”. It certainly must be taken by faith that God is inifinite, but that is the foundation for a belief in eternal life, for only an infinite God can promise an eternal life where there is no end to what He can give to us.

But there are many creeds, some agreed to by ecumenical councils and some not. And then some only agreed to by smaller and smaller councils until there is nothing ecumenical about them.

When we meet a new person, what does it take to truly know him? Is it the things he has by nature such as race and sex? Or is it the choices he makes about what kind of person he wants to be. Likewise, what does it take to know God? Is it the things He has by nature such as power and knowledge, or is it the choices He make about what He thinks is important, like love and free will?